A. "Doth Charidas rest beneath thee?"
B. "If it is the son of Arimmas of Cyrene that you mean, he does."
A. "What is it like below, Charidas?"
C. "Very dark."
A. "And what about return?"
C. "All lies."
A. "And Pluto?"
C. "A myth."
A. "I am done for."
C. "This is the truth that I tell you, but if you want to hear something agreeable, a large ox in Hades costs a shilling."
α. 'Η ῥ᾽ ὑπὸ σοὶ Χαρίδας ἀναπαύεται; β. Εἰ τὸν Ἀρίμμα
τοῦ Κυρηναίου παῖδα λέγεις, ὑπ᾽ ἐμοί.
α. Ὦ Χαρίδα, τί τὰ νέρθε; γ. Πολὺ σκότος. α. Αἱ δ᾽ ἄνοδοι τί;
γ. Ψεῦδος. α. Ὁ δὲ Πλούτων; γ. Μῦθος. α. Ἀπωλόμεθα.
γ. Οὗτος ἐμὸς λόγος ὔμμιν ἀληθινός· εἰ δὲ τὸν ἡδύν
βούλει, πελλαίου βοῦς μέγας εἰν ἀΐδῃ.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, October 08, 2011
Post Mortem
Greek Anthology 7.524 (Callimachus, tr. W.R. Paton):