Theocritus Bion and Moschus Rendered into English Prose Part 23

IDYL IX

Would that my father had taught me the craft of a keeper of sheep, For so in the shade of the elm-tree, or under the rocks on the steep, Piping on reeds I had sat, and had lulled my sorrow to sleep. {210}

Footnotes

{0a} This fragment is from the collection of M. Fauriel; Chants Populaires de le Grece.

{0b} Empedocles on Etna.

{0c} Ballet des Arts, danse par sa Majeste; le 8 janvier, 1663. A Paris, par Robert Ballard, MDCLXIII.

{0d} These and the following ditties are from the modern Greek ballads collected by MM. Fauriel and Legrand.

{0e} See Couat, La Poesie Alexandrine, p. 68 et seq., Paris 1882.

{0f} See Couat, op. cit. p. 395.

{0g} Couat, p. 434.

{0h} See Helbig, Camp.e.n.i.sche Wandmalerie, and Brunn, Die griechischen Bukoliker und die Bildende Kunst.

{0i} The Hecale of Callimachus, or Theseus and the Marathonian Bull, seems to have been rather a heroic idyl than an epic.

{6} Or reading [Greek]=Aeolian, cf. Thucyd. iii. 102.

{9} These are places famous in the oldest legends of Arcadia.

{11} Reading, [Greek]. Cf. Fritzsche's note and Harpocration, s.v.

{13} On the word [Greek], see Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 700; and 'The Bull Roarer,' in the translator's Custom and Myth.

{19} Reading [Greek]. Cf. line 3, and note.

{21} He refers to a piece of folk-lore.

{24} The shovel was used for tossing the sand of the lists; the sheep were food for Aegon's great appet.i.te.

{26} Reading [Greek].

{34} Melanthius was the treacherous goatherd put to a cruel death by Odysseus.

{36} Ameis and Fritzsche take [Greek] (as here) to be the dog, not Galatea. The s.e.x of the Cyclops's sheep-dog makes the meaning obscure.

{40} Or, [Greek]. Hermann renders this domum Oromedonteam a gigantic house.' Oromedon or Eurymedon was the king of the Gigantes, mentioned in Odyssey vii. 58.

{41} [Greek]. This is taken by some to mean algam infimam, 'the bottom weeds of the deepest seas', by others, the sea-weed highest on the sh.o.r.e, at high watermark.

{42} Comatas was a goatherd who devoutly served the Muses, and sacrificed to them his masters goats. His master therefore shut him up in a cedar chest, opening which at the year's end he found Comatas alive, by miracle, the bees having fed him with honey. Thus, in a mediaeval legend, the Blessed Virgin took the place, for a year, of the frail nun who had devoutly served her.

{43} Sneezing in Sicily, as in most countries, was a happy omen.

{50} A superfluous and apocryphal line is here omitted.

{53} An allusion to the common superst.i.tion (cf. Idyl xii. 24) that perjurers and liars were punished by pimples and blotches. The old Irish held that blotches showed themselves on the faces of Brehons who gave unjust judgments.

{54} Spring in the south, like Night in the tropics, comes 'at one stride'; but Wordsworth finds the rendering distasteful 'neque sic redditum valde placet.'

{57} 'Quant a ta maniere, je ne puis la rendre.'--SAINTE-BEUVE.

{61} Reading [Greek].

{70} Cf. Wordsworth's proposed conjecture -

[Greek].

Meineke observes 'tota haec carminis pars luxata et foedissime depravata est'. There seems to be a rude early pun in lines 73, 74.

{72} The reading -

[Greek],--makes good sense. [Greek] is put in the mouth of the girl, and would mean 'a good guess'! The allusion of a guest to the superst.i.tion that the wolf struck people dumb is taken by Cynisca for a reference to young Wolf, her secret lover.

{73} Or, as Wordsworth suggests, reading [Greek], 'for him your cheeks are wet with tears.'

{74a} Shaving in the bronze, and still more, of course, in the stone age, was an uncomfortable and difficult process. The backward and barbarous Thracians were therefore trimmed in the roughest way, like Aeschines, with his long gnawed moustache.

{74b} The Megarians having inquired of the Delphic oracle as to their rank among Greek cities, were told that they were absolute last, and not in the reckoning at all.

{77} Our Lady, here, is Persephone. The e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n served for the old as well as for the new religion of Sicily. The dialogue is here arranged as in Fritzsche's text, and in line 8 his punctuation is followed.

{78a} If cats are meant, the proverb is probably Alexandrian.

Common as cats were in Egypt, they were late comers in Greece.

{78b} Most of the dialogue has been distributed as in the text of Fritzsche.

{82} Reading [Greek].

{89} I.e. Syracuse, a colony of the Ephyraeans or Corinthians. The Maiden is Persephone, the Mother Demeter.

{93} Deipyle, daughter of Adrastus.

{98} Reading--[Greek]. See also Wordsworth's note on line 26.

{104} For [Greek] Wordsworth and Hermann conjecture [Greek]. The sense would be that Eunica, who thinks herself another Cypris, or Aphrodite is, in turn, to be rejected by her Ares, her soldier-lover, as she has rejected the herdsman.