Sunday, October 22, 2023
The Road Less Travelled
Callimachus, Epigram 28 Pfeiffer = Greek Anthology 12.43 (tr. W.R. Paton):
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I detest poems all about the same trite stories, and do not love a road that carries many this way and that. I hate, too, a beloved who is in circulation, and I do not drink from a fountain. All public things disgust me. Lysanias, yes indeed thou art fair, fair. But before I can say this clearly an echo says, "He is another's."Commentary in Alexander Sens, Hellenistic Epigrams: A Selection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 149-152. See also Peter Krafft, "Zu Kallimachos' Echo-Epigramm (28 Pf.)," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 120 (1977) 1-29.
ἐχθαίρω τὸ ποίημα τὸ κυκλικόν, οὐδὲ κελεύθῳ
χαίρω, τίς πολλοὺς ὧδε καὶ ὧδε φέρει·
μισῶ καὶ περίφοιτον ἐρώμενον, οὐδ᾿ ἀπὸ κρήνης
πίνω· σικχαίνω πάντα τὰ δημόσια.
Λυσανίη, σὺ δὲ ναιχὶ καλὸς καλός· ἀλλὰ πρὶν εἰπεῖν 5
τοῦτο σαφῶς, ἠχώ φησί τις "ἄλλος ἔχει."
