Let not the fiery god be single, Oh! be it ne'er the birth of madness! To Scythians leave these wild excesses, Our choral hymns shall sweetly breathe, ODE LXIII.1 To Love, the soft and blooming child, To Love, for heaven and earth adore him, And gods and mortals bow before him! ODE LXIV.2 HASTE thee, nymph, whose wingèd spear Wounds the fleeting mountain deer! Dian, Jove's immortal child, Huntress of the savage wild! This fragment is preserved in Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. lib. vi., and in Arsenius, Collect. Græc.-Barnes. It appears to have been the opening of a hymn in praise of Love. 2 This hymn to Diana is extant in Hephæstion. There is an anecdote of our poet, which his led to some doubt whether he ever wrote any odes of this kind. It is related by the Scholiast upon Pindar (Isthmionic, od. ii. v. 1, as cited by Barnes). Anacreon being asked why he addressed all his hyn ns to women, and none to the deities, answered,Because women are my deities.' I have assumed the same liberty in reporting this anecdote which I have done in translating some of the odes; and it were to be wished that these little infidelities were always considered pardonable in the interpretation of the ancients; thus, when nature is forgotten in the original, in the translation, tamen usque recurret.' 3 Lethe, a river of Ionia, according to Strabo, falling into the Meander. Near to it was situated the town Magnesia, in favour of whose in Goddess with the sun-bright hair ! ODE LXV.4 LIKE some wanton filly sporting, Wanton filly! tell me why Thou soon shalt feel the rein's control, ODE LXVI.5 To thee, the Queen of nymphs divine, Fairest of all that fairest shine; habitants our poet is supposed to have addressed this supplication to Diana. It was written (as Madame Dacier conjectures) on the occasion of some battle, in which the Magnesians had been defeated. This ode, which is addressed to some Thracian girl, exists in Heraclides, and has been imitated very frequently by Horace, as all the annotators have remarked. Madame Dacier rejects the allegory, which runs so obviously throughout it, and supposes it to have been addressed to a young mare belonging to Polycrates. There is more modesty than ingenuity in the lady's conjecture. Pierius, in the fourth book of his Hieroglyphics, cites this ode, and informs us that the horse was the hieroglyphical emblem of pride. 5 This ode is introduced in the romance of Theodorus Prodromus, and is that kind of epithalamium which was sung like a scholium at the nuptial banquet. Among the many works of the impassioned To thee, thou blushing young Desire, Who rul'st the world with darts of fire! And oh! thou nuptial Power, to thee Who bear'st of life the guardian key; Breathing my soul in fragrant praise, And weaving wild my votive lays, For thee, O Queen! I wake the lyre, For thee, thou blushing young Desire! And oh for thee, thou nuptial Power, Come, and illume this genial hour. Look on thy bride, luxuriant boy! And while thy lambent glance of joy Plays over all her blushing charms, Delay not, snatch her to thine arms, Before the lovely trembling prey, Like a young birdling, wing away! Oh! Stratocles, impassioned youth! Dear to the Queen of amorous truth, And dear to her, whose yielding zone Will soon resign her all thine own; Turn to Myrilla, turn thine eye, Breathe to Myrilla, breathe thy sigh! To those bewitching beauties turn; For thee they mantle, flush, and burn! Not more the rose, the queen of flowers, Outblushes all the glow of bowers, Than she unrivalled bloom discloses, The sweetest rose, where all are roses! Oh! may the sun, benignant, shed His blandest influence o'er thy bed; And foster there an infant tree, To blush like her, and bloom like thee ! ODE LXVII.1 GENTLE youth! whose looks assume Sapphe, of which time and ignorant superstition have deprived us, the loss of her epithalamiums is not one of the least that we deplore. A subject so interesting to an amorous faney was warmly felt, and must have been warmly described, by such a soul and such an imagination. The following lines are cited as a relic of one of her epithalamiums: Ολβιε γαμβρε, σοι μεν δη γαμος ὡς ἄρας, Εκτετελεστό, εχεις δε παρθένον αν αράς. -See Scaliger, in his Poetics, on the Epitha Thou little know'st the fond control For mine is many a soothing pleasure, ODE LXVIII.2 RICH in bliss, I proudly scorn ODE LXIX.4 Now Neptune's sullen month appears, The angry night-cloud swells with tears; And savage storms, infuriate driven, Fly howling in the face of heaven! Now, now, my friends, the gathering gloom With roseate rays of wine illume: who has thus compiled the 57th of his edition, and the littic ode beginning pep' vdwp, dep' owvov, w mat, which he has subjoined to the epigrams. The fragments combined in this ode are the 67th, 96th, 97th, and 100th of Barnes' edition, to which I refer the reader for the names of the authors by whom they are preserved. 2 This fragment is preserved in the third book of Strabo. 3 He here alludes to Arganthonius, who lived, according to Lucian, a hundred and fifty years; and reigned, according to Herodotus, eighty.See Barnes. 4 This is composed of two fragments, the 70th and 81st in Barnes. They are both found in Eustathius. Three fragments form this little ode, all of which are preserved in Athenæus. They are the 82d, 75th, and 83d in Barnes. 2 Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a courtezan, who, in order to gratify three lovers, without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each was satisfied with his favour, and flattered himself with the preference. This circumstance is extremely like the subject of one of the tensons of Savari de Mauléon, a troubadour. See l'Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. The recital is a curious picture of the puerile gallantries of chivalry. This poem is compiled by Barnes, from Athenæus, Hephaestion, and Arsenius. See Barnes, 80. This I have formed from the 8th and 85th of Barnes' edition. The two fragments are found in Athenæus. In the original. ODE LXXII.4 WITH twenty chords my lyre is hung, The nursling fawn, that in some shade ODE LXXIII.6 FARE thee well, perfidious maid! ODE LXXIV.7 I BLOOMED, awhile, a happy flower, ODE LXXV.8 MONARCH Love! resistless boy, With whom the rosy Queen of Joy, Ος εν ύλη κεροεσσης Απολειφθεις ύπο μητρος. 'Horned' here undoubtedly seems a strange epithet. Madame Dacier, however, observes that Sophocles, Callimachus, etc., have all applied it in the very same manner; and she seems to agree in the conjecture of the scholiast upon Pindar, that perhaps horns are not always peculiar to the males. I think we may with more ease conclude it to be a licence of the poet, jussit habere puellam cornua.' 6 This fragment is preserved by the scholiast upon Aristophanes, and is the 87th in Barnes. 7 This is to be found in Hephæstion, and is the 89th of Barnes' edition. I must here apologize for omitting a very considerable fragment imputed to our poet, avon Euрuñνan μedeι, etc., which is preserved in the twelfth book of Athenæus, and is the 91st in Barnes. If it was really Anacreon who wrote it, nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi. It is in a style of gross satire, and is full of expressions which never could be gracefully translated. 8 This fragment is preserved by Dion Chrysostom, Orat. ii. de Regno.-- Sce Parnes, 93. And nymphs, that glance ethereal blue, And counsel her to learn from thee ODE LXXVI.1 SPIRIT of Love! whose tresses shine But she, the nymph for whom I glow, ODE LXXVII.2 HITHER, gentle Muse of mine, Come and teach thy votary old Many a golden hymn divine, For the nymph with vest of gold. This fragment, which is extant in Athenæus (Barnes, 101), is supposed, on the authority of Chamæleon, to have been addressed to Sappho. We have also a stanza attributed to her, which some romancers have supposed to be her answer to Anacreon. Mais par malheur (as Bayle says) Sappho vint au monde environ cent ou six vingts ans avant Anacréon.' Nouvelles de la Rép. des Lett. tom. ii. de Novembre 1684. The following is her fragment, the compliment of which is very finely imagined; she supposes that the Muse has dictated the verses of Anacreon: Κεινον, ω χρυσοθρονε Μουσ', ενισπες Ch Muse! who sitt'st on golden throne, But, goddess, from thy throne of gold, He lately learned and sang for me. 2 This is formed of the 124th and 119th fragments in Barnes, both of which are to be found in Scaliger's Poetics. De Pauw thinks that those detached lines and couplets, which Scaliger has adduced as examples in his Poetics, are by no means authentic, but of his own fabrication. This is generally inserted among the remains of Alcæus. Some, however, have attributed it to Anacreon. See our poet's 22nd ode, and the notes. See Barnes, 173. This fragment, to which I have taken the liberty of adding a turn not to be found in the original, is cited by Lucian in his little essay on the Gallic Hercules. 5 Barnes, 125. This, if I remember right, is in Scaliger's Poetics. Gail has omitted it in his collection of fragments. LET me resign a wretched breath, I KNOW thou lov'st a brimming measure, FROM dread Leucadia's frowning steep Mix me, child, a cup divine, I FEAR that love disturbs my rest, I think there's madness in my breast, Among the Epigrams of the Anthologia there are some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a kind of Coronis to this work; but I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety: a frequent recurrence of the same thought, within the limits of an epigram, to which they are confined, would render a collection of them rather uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those elegant tributes to the reputation of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but, designing a translation of all that are on the subject, I imagined it was necessary to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase. Ω το φιλον στερξας, φιλε, βαρβιτον, ω συν αοιδα Παντα διαπλωσας και συν ερωτι βίον. AROUND the tomb, oh bard divine! Where soft thy hallowed brow reposes, Long may the deathless ivy twine, And Summer pour her waste of roses! I can feel it, alas! I can feel it too well, fragment of some poem in which Anacreon had 123rd of Barnes. 5 This fragment is collected by Barnes from Demetrius Phalareus and Eustathius, and is subjoined in his edition to the epigrams attributed to our poet. And here is the last of those little scattered flowers which I thought I might venture with any grace to transplant. I wish it could be said of the garland which they form, To d' w AvaкрEOVтos. |