Monday, October 03, 2022

 

The Short and the Long of It

Richard Kannicht and Bruno Snell, edd., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. 2: Fragmenta Adespota, rev. ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 88-89, fragment 279h:
My translation, followed by a transcription of the Greek:
Life is short,
long is the time which we mortals finish under ground.
It is the portion of all to suffer destiny's
doom, whenever it catches up with us.

βραχὺς ὁ βίος, μακρὸν δέ
τὸν κατὰ γᾶς αἰῶνα τελευτῶμεν βροτοί·
πᾶσι δὲ μοῖρα φέρεσθαι δαίμονος
αἶσαν, ἅτις ἂν τύχῃ.
On δαίμονος αἶσαν cf. Homer, Odyssey 11.61 (δαίμονος αἶσα κακή) and Carmina Epigraphica Graeca 84, line 2 (δαίμονος αἶσα), with Christopher G. Brown's note in "The Stele of Mnesagora and Nikochares (CEG 84)," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 152 (2005) 1-5 (at 1, n. 3).

This is an inscription, but it doesn't seem to show up in Searchable Greek Inscriptions.



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