And you, ancestral land of my forefathers,
hail! For to a man, even if he is overcome by troubles,
there is no ground sweeter than that which nourished him.
σὺ δ’, ὦ πατρῴα χθὼν ἐμῶν γεννητόρων,
χαῖρ’· ἀνδρὶ γάρ τοι, κἂν ὑπερβάλλῃ κακοῖς,
οὐκ ἔστι τοῦ θρέψαντος ἥδιον πέδον.
"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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Thursday, January 11, 2024
The Fatherland
Euripides, fragment 817 Kannicht (from Phoenix; my translation):