CADMUSThe title is adapted from E.R. Dodds, commentary on Euripides, Bacchae, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 90, who speaks of "taking a cab to Cithaeron." The lines bring to mind the scene I often used to see at the start of Shabbat at the lower, southern end of Fairview Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where the sidewalks were thronged with worshippers walking up the hill. It was an inspiring sight.
No chariot then will take us to the mountains.
TEIRESIAS
No, for then the god would be less honored.
ΚΑΔΜΟΣ
οὔκουν ὄχοισιν εἰς ὄρος περάσομεν.
ΤΕΙΡΕΣΙΑΣ
ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὁμοίως ἂν ὁ θεὸς τιμὴν ἔχοι.
"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 13, 2018
Don't Take a Cab to Cithaeron
Euripides, Bacchae 191-192 (tr. David Kovacs):