This word increased by so much his inclination to tears that he wept, even with his arms about his faithful, lovely wife. So at sea when Poseidon has swamped a good ship by making her the target of his winds and mighty waves, the sight of land appears wonderfully kind to the few men of her crew who have escaped by swimming. How they swarm ashore from the grey sea, their bodies all crusted with salt spume, but happy, happy, for the evil overpassed! Just so was she happy to have her husband once more in sight and clasped in her white arms which lingered round his neck, unable to let him go. Rosy dawn might have found them thus, still weeping, only that grey-eyed Athene otherwise ordained. She retarded the night a long while in transit and made Dawn, the golden-throned, tarry by the eastern Ocean’s edge; not harnessing Lampus and Phaethon, the sharp-hooved young horses that carry her and bring daylight to the world.
At last provident Odysseus said to his wife: “My dear one, we have not yet reached the issue of our trials. In store for us is immeasurable toil prescribed, and needs must I fulfil it to the end. The day I went down into Hades’ realm, the ghost of Teiresias warned me of everything when I asked after my home-coming and my company’s. Wherefore let us to bed, dear wife, there at long last to renew ourselves with the sweet meed of sleep.” To which Penelope answered, “Bed is yours the instant your heart wills, for have not the Gods restored you to your own great house and native land? But now that Heaven has put it in your mind, tell me of this ordeal remaining. Later I must know; and forewarned is forearmed.”
Odysseus in reply assured her, “Brave spirit, I shall tell you, hiding nothing: but why press me insistently for knowledge that will no more please you than me? He gave me word that I must take my shapely oar and wander through many places of men, until I find a people that know not the sea and have no salt to season their food, a people for whom purple-prowed ships are unknown things, as too the shaped oars which wing their flight. An infallible token of them he told me, and I make you wise to it. When another wayfarer passes me and says I have a winnowing fan on my stout shoulder, even there am I to strike my oar into the ground and offer for rich sacrifice to King Poseidon a ram, a bull and a ramping boar. Thence I may turn homeward, to celebrate the Gods of high heaven with hecatombs of victims, and all things else in order due. While death shall come for me from the sea, very mildly, ending me amidst a contented people after failing years have brought me low. He assured me all this would be fulfilled.” And Penelope’s wise comment was, “If the Gods will make old age your happier time, then there is prospect of your ill-luck passing.”
Thus they chatted while Eurynome and the nurse under the flaring torchlight arranged the soft coverlets upon the bed. When they had busily made it comfortable and deep, the old nurse returned to her sleeping-place, while Eurynome the chambermaid conducted them bedward with her torch. She ushered them to their chamber and withdrew; and gladsomely they performed their bed-rites in the old fashion: Telemachus and the herdsmen staying their feet from the dance and staying the women, so that all slept in the darkling halls.
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA
Theogony & Works and Days
Hesiod
Translated by Richmond Lattimore, 1959
There was no one quite like Prometheus. A Titan, or giant, he stole fire from the gods, and gave it to mankind. The seventh-century BC poet Hesiod told his story across two poems, the Theogony and Works and Days. On the one hand Prometheus’ gift of fire was a blessing for humans since it enabled them to live self-sufficiently from the gods. On the other, it spelled the end of their Golden Age, in which they had lived happy lives free from work and suffering. Another consequence of Prometheus’ actions was the creation of the first woman, Pandora (‘all-gifted’). Epimetheus, Prometheus’ less intelligent brother, was quick to fall for her charms.
Theogony
for Prometheus once had matched wits
against the great son of Kronos.
It was when gods, and mortal men,
took their separate positions
at Mekone, and Prometheus,
eager to try his wits, cut up
a great ox, and set it before Zeus,
to see if he could outguess him.
He took the meaty parts and the inwards
thick with fat, and set them
before men, hiding them away
in an ox’s stomach,
but the white bones of the ox he arranged,
with careful deception,
inside a concealing fold of white fat,
and set it before Zeus.
At last the father of gods
and men spoke to him, saying:
“Son of Iapetos, conspicuous among all Kings,
old friend, oh how prejudicially
you divided the portions.”
So Zeus, who knows imperishable counsels,
spoke in displeasure,
but Prometheus the devious-deviser,
lightly smiling,
answered him again, quite well aware
of his artful deception:
“Zeus most high, most honored
among the gods everlasting,
choose whichever of these the heart within
would have you.”
He spoke, with intent to deceive, and Zeus,
who knows imperishable
counsels, saw it, the trick
did not escape him, he imagined
evils for mortal men in his mind,
and meant to fulfil them.
In both his hands he took up the portion
of the white fat. Anger
rose up about his heart
and the spite mounted in his spirit
when he saw the white bones of the ox
in deceptive arrangement.
Ever since that time the races of mortal men
on earth have burned
the white bones to the immortals
on the smoky altars.
Then Zeus the cloud-gatherer
in great vexation said to him:
“Son of Iapetos, versed in planning
beyond all others,
old friend, so after all you did not forget
your treachery.”
So Zeus, who knows imperishable counsels,
spoke in his anger,
and ever remembering this deception
thereafter, he would not
give the force of weariless fire
not to people who inhabit the earth
and are mortal,
no, but the strong son of Iapetos
outwitted him
and stole the far-seen glory
of weariless fire, hiding it
in the hollow fennel stalk;
this bit deep into the feeling
of Zeus who thunders on high,
and it galled the heart inside him
when he saw the far-seen glory of fire
among mortal people,
and next, for the price of the fire,
be made an evil thing for mankind.
Works and Days
He told glorious Hephaistos to make haste, and plaster
earth with water, and to infuse it with a human voice
and vigor, and make the face
like the immortal goddesses,
the bewitching features of a young girl;
meanwhile Athene
was to teach her her skills, and how
to do the intricate weaving,
while Aphrodite was to mist her head
in golden endearment
and the cruelty of desire and longings
that wear out the body,
but to Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argos,
he gave instructions
to put in her the mind of a hussy,
and a treacherous nature.
So Zeus spoke. And all obeyed Lord Zeus,
the son of Kronos.
The renowned strong smith modeled her figure of earth,
in the likeness
of a decorous young girl, as the son of Kronos
had wished it.
The goddess gray-eyed Athene dressed and arrayed her;
the Graces,
who are goddesses, and hallowed Persuasion
put necklaces
of gold upon her body, while the Seasons,
with glorious tresses,
put upon her head a coronal of spring flowers,
[and Pallas Athene put all decor upon her body].
But into her heart Hermes, the guide,
the slayer of Argos,
put lies, and wheedling words
of falsehood, and a treacherous nature,
made her as Zeus of the deep thunder wished,
and he, the gods’ herald,
put a voice inside her, and gave her
the name of woman,
Pandora, because all the gods
who have their homes on Olympos
had given her each a gift, to be a sorrow to men
who eat bread. Now when he had done
with this sheer, impossible
deception, the Father sent the gods’ fleet messenger,
Hermes,
to Epimetheus, bringing her, a gift,
nor did Epimetheus
remember to think how Prometheus had told him never
to accept a gift from Olympian Zeus,
but always to send it
back, for fear it might prove
to be an evil for mankind.
He took the evil, and only perceived it
when he possessed her.
Since before this time the races of men
had been living on earth
free from all evils, free from laborious work,
and free from
all wearing sicknesses that bring
their fates down on men
[for men grow old suddenly
in the midst of misfortune];
but the woman, with her hands lifting away the lid
from the great jar,
scattered its contents, and her design
was sad troubles for mankind.
Hope was the only spirit that stayed there
in the unbreakable
closure of the jar, under its rim,
and could not fly forth
abroad, for the lid of the great jar
closed down first and contained her;
this was by the will of cloud-gathering Zeus
of the aegis;
Theogony
And in ineluctable, painful bonds
he fastened Prometheus
of the subtle mind, for he drove a stanchion
through his middle. Also
he let loose on him the wing-spread eagle,
and it was feeding
on his imperishable liver, which by night
would grow back
to size from what the spread-winged bird
had eaten in the daytime.
WHATEVER ONE LOVES
‘Fragment 16’
Sappho
Translated by Diane J. Rayor, 2014
Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos in the seventh century BC. Although she is said to have married a man and had a daughter by him named Cleïs, the poems in which she divulged her feelings for women have ensured that she has remained the ‘Lesbian’ poet in the popular imagination. In this fragmentary poem, her beloved Anaktoria has left her. Sappho compares her favourably to Helen of Troy. The implication is not simply that Anaktoria is beautiful, but that she has been led away almost against her will – like Helen, whom Paris took as his prize through the machinations of Aphrodite. Sappho hereby ingeniously avoids placing the blame on Anaktoria, and leaves the door open for a reconciliation.
Some say an army of horsemen, others
say foot soldiers, still others say a fleet
is the finest thing on the dark earth.
I say it is whatever one loves.
Everyone can understand this – consider
that Helen, far surpassing the beauty
of mortals, left behind
the best man of all
to sail away to Troy. She remembered
neither daughter nor dear parents,
as [Aphrodite] led her away
… [un]bending … mind
… lightly … chinks.
… reminding me now
of Anaktoria gone.
I would rather see her lovely step
and the radiant sparkle of her face
than all the war chariots in Lydia
and soldiers battling in arms.
Impossible … to happen
… human, but to pray for a share
… and for myself
PERSEPHONE AND THE POMEGRANATE SEEDS
Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Anon.
Translated by Peter McDonald, 2016
Demeter, goddess of the harvest, is devastated when her daughter Persephone is snatched away. Who is guilty of the crime? None other than Zeus’ brother Hades, god of the Underworld. As Demeter pines for her loss, the earth’s crops stop growing. This story, told in the form of a hymn in the seventh or sixth century BC, provides an explanation for the seasons. Peter McDonald’s translation is suitably emotionally charged.
Hymn 2: To Demeter
This is about Demeter, the long-haired goddess
Demeter, and about her child, a skinny-legged
little girl who was just taken away
one morning by Hades, Death himself, on the say-so
of his brother Zeus, the deep- and wide-bellowing God.
She was apart from her mother, and from Demeter’s
protecting sword, made all of gold, when he came;
she was running about in an uncut spring meadow
with her friends, the daughters of the god Ocean,
and picking flowers here and there – crocuses and wild roses,
with violets and tiny irises, then hyacinths
and one narcissus planted there by Gaia, the Earth,
as Zeus demanded, and as a favour to Death,
to trap the girl, whose own eyes were as small and bright
as the buds of flowers: it blazed and shone out
with astonishing colours, a prodigy as much for
the immortal gods as for people who die.
A hundred flower-heads sprung from the root
with a sweet smell so heavy and overpowering
that the wide sky and the earth, even the salt waves
of the sea lit up, as though they were all smiling.
The girl was dazzled; she reached out with both hands
to gather up the brilliant thing; but then the earth
opened, the earth’s surface with its level roads
buckled, there on the plain of Nysa, and up from below
rushed at her, driving his horses, the king of the dead.
He snatched her up, struggling, and he drove her away
in his golden chariot as she wailed and shrieked
and called out loud to her father to help her,
to Zeus, the highest of high powers;
yet nobody – not one god, not one human being,
not even the laden olive-trees – paid heed to her;
but from deep in a cave, the young night-goddess
Hecatē, Perses’ daughter, in her white linen veil,
could hear the child’s cries; and so could the god Helios
– god of the Sun, like his father Hyperion –
hear the girl screaming for help to Zeus, her own father:
Zeus, who was keeping his distance, apart from the gods,
busy in a temple, taking stock there of the fine
offerings and the prayers of mortal men.
For all her struggling, it was with the connivance of Zeus
that this prince of the teeming dark, the god with many titles,
her own uncle, with his team of unstoppable horses
took away the little girl: she, as long as she kept in sight
the earth and the starry night sky, the sun’s day-beams
and the seas pulled by tides and swimming in fish,
still hoped, hoped even now to see her mother again
and get back to her family of the eternal gods.
From the mountain tops to the bottom of the sea, her voice
echoed, a goddess’s voice; and, when her mother heard
those cries, pain suddenly jabbed at her heart: she tore
in two the veil that covered her perfumed hair,
threw a dark shawl across her shoulders, and shot
out like a bird across dry land and water,
frantic to search; but nobody – neither god, nor human –
was ready to tell her what had happened, not even
a solitary bird would give Demeter the news.
For nine whole days, with a blazing torch in each hand,
the goddess roamed the earth, not touching, in her grief,
either the gods’ food or their drink, ambrosia or nectar,
and not stopping even to splash her skin with water.
On the tenth day, at the first blink of dawn, Hecatē
came to help her, carrying torches of her own,
and gave her first what news she could: ‘Royal Demeter,
bringer of seasons, and all the gifts the seasons bring,
what god in heaven, or what man on this earth
can have snatched away Persephone, and broken your heart?