Monday, August 05, 2019
I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals
Philemon, fragment 96, tr. John Maxwell Edmonds, The Fragments of Attic Comedy, Vol. III A (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1961), p. 63 (fragment 93 in his numbering):
The Greek, after Poetae Comici Graeci, edd. R. Kassel and C. Austin, Vol. VII: Menecrates — Xenophon (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), p. 279:
Newer› ‹Older
Thrice blest indeed the animal creationEdmonds, op. cit., p. 62, misprints the second word of the Philemon fragment in Greek — he has τισμακάρια instead of τρισμακάρια:
That such things don't need their consideration!
They never try themselves for doing their will,
Nor suffer other adventitious ill;
Each kind's passed nature's bill straight into law:
But human life's a life not worth a straw;
Our laws have made us slaves of fantasies,
Our forebears' slaves and our posterity's;
Whate'er we aim at, evil's what we hit,
And we can always find excuse for it.
The Greek, after Poetae Comici Graeci, edd. R. Kassel and C. Austin, Vol. VII: Menecrates — Xenophon (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), p. 279:
ὦ τρισμακάρια πάντα καὶ τρισόλβιαImage of this fragment in the edition of Kassel and Austin:
τὰ θηρί', οἷς οὐκ ἔστι περὶ τούτων λόγος·
οὔτ᾿ εἰς ἔλεγχον οὐδἐν αὐτῶν ἔρχεται,
οὔτ' ἄλλο τοιοῦτ' οὐδέν ἐστ' αὐτοῖς κακὸν
ἐπακτόν, ἣν δ' ἂν εἰσενέγκηται φύσιν
ἕκαστον, εὐθὺς καὶ νόμον ταύτην ἔχει.
ἡμεῖς δ' ἀβίωτον ζῶμεν ἄνθρωποι βίον·
δουλεύομεν δόξαισιν, εὑρόντες νόμους,
προγόνοισιν, ἐγγόνοισιν, οὐκ ἔστ' ἀποτυχεῖν
κακοῦ, πρόφασιν δ' ἀεί τιν' ἐξευρίσκομεν.
Labels: typographical and other errors
