So Many Particulars

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One part Lucian, one part Brecht, three parts Arrian. And as Oscar would say 'all garbage all the time.' However it tickled my fancy, so read it or ignore it as you wish, I have already moved on.

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Euoi, Euoi, Saboi!
The ecstatic raging followers
Of the loud roaring, ivy wreathed
God chanted and danced, and the songs
Reverberated the forest glens
And quiet coverts of the wide flooding
High banked river Indus. Icy cold
Waters tumbled from glaciered vast
High mountains. Closer to the world
Encircling river than the laughing
Shouting drunken god the myriad
Companions did march. Strong Herakles
Cursed and kicked the barren ground before
The most steadfast Sogdian rock.
Macedonian soldiers grew wings,
Flew up the cliff face in the murky night,
And so conquered what stymied Herakles.

Nothing could stop, no one could stop
The conquering god-king Alexander.
Not the wide fast flowing rivers,
Not the lazy streams flowing to marshes,
Not the dizzying gorges, not the cloud
Gathering mountains, not the howling
Jangling deserts, not the walls of island
Proud Tyre, not the mysteries of sand
Blown trees of the oasis of Siwa,
Not the massed cedar built long boats
Of purple clad Phoenicia,
Not the fire worshiping magi,
Not the mud built bitumen mortared
Walls of Babylon, of Susa,
Of Persepolis, not the seven walled
City of stars Ekbatana, not the
Rabbis of Jerusalem, not the Gates
Of Persia, not the battle fleeing
King of Kings, not the tattooed
Boulder hurling liberty loving tribes,
Not the craggy walls of ancient Thebes
Where only darling Pindar's house remained,
Not the foot stamping naked Buddhists.
Nothing could stop, no one could stop
The god-king Achilles reborn.

Naught but the sorrow of the hosts, the ones
That marched and fought and explored and said
Finally this far and no further,
For we are tired and our dear ones
We miss, our wives, our children, our aged
Fathers and mothers. For we have been
From home for as long as Menelaus
Before the walls of windy Illius.
This far we go and no further.

Only thus was Alexander stopped.

Golden throned Hera

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Hymn 12 To Hera.

Of golden throned Hera I sing!
She was born of Rhea.
Queen of the deathless ones
She is foremost in bearing.

Sister and wife
Loud thundering Zeus.

Glorious she is,
And all the blest
Of high Olympus
Stand in dread of her.

And they honour her
Equal with Zeus
Who delights in thunder.

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Hera is an old god, attested to in Mycenaean tablets as E-ra. Her name
is open to interpretation. Maybe related to Hora, or season, to show
that she is ripe for marriage. One of her roles is the Goddess of
marriage. She is often represented (as is Demeter) in a three fold
aspect. The Girl (Pais), The wife (Teleia, which also can mean the
perfect, the fulfilled, without blemish), and finally the Widow
(Chere). In this she shows a history the live of women. Is it also
representing the yearly cycle spring, summer, winter? Every year she
regains her virginity by bathing in the sacred stream Kanathos, in
Samos her anionic plank was washed in the sea.

Chadwick sees her name as being the feminine version of the word
hero. Or maybe it is the feminine version of master, that is
mistress. Regardless her temple at Samos is the first enclosed temple,
dating back to 800BC. Before this she is represented aniconicly as a
pillar in Argos, and a plank of wood in Samos. Argos being one of the
cities she loved best, the others being Sparta and Mycenae. 

Was she a remnant of earlier matriarchal religion and society? Rather
than seeing myth as 'other people's religion', it may be better to see
myth as other people's history. Was her marriage and subordination of
Zeus, as well as her frequent opposition and jealousy to Zeus an echo
of this great overturning? Do not the frequent punishments that Zeus
feels he has to mete out to his wife point to the period of struggle
that must have arisen from an overturning of matriarchy, and could the
overturning have proceeded any other way than by violence? I do not
know enough to be able to give an firm answer, but my 'feeling' would
be yes, this is what happened and the marriage of Zeus and Hera is a
record of the rise of the patriarchy.

We can look at for example her hostility to Herakles, her hostility to
the many 'affairs' of Zeus, and also his response to her infidelities.
Many beatings and once even tying her to a cloud, with anvils on her
feet. The punishments of her lovers, Kalypso, complains in book 5 of
the Odyssey about the unfairness of the male gods taking lovers, and
punishing the females for doing the same thing. Could we also see
echos of this in her various epitaphs, such as (Iliad 8.209) Aptoepes,
fearless in speech, as well as Neikei, fond of quarrels or strife. How
many women toady to are referred to in these shrewish terms? Does all
this point to Hera as being a woman who is oppressed and yet still
striving for her freedom?

Cows are sacred to her, as are peacocks. She is also often shown
holding a pomegranate or an opium poppy. The pomegranate, as well as
being the symbol of Kore, is the symbol of the ancient Great Goddess.

In my translation I down played her beauty and tried to reinforce the
idea of her being equal to Zeus. I hope I did not do too much violence
to the originate poem.

The Barren Sea

Hymn 22 to Poseidon

About Poseidon I begin to sing!
Mover of the earth and desolate sea
Lord of the Deep!
He Enfolds Helikon
And wide Aigai

The honoured gods divided
Amongst themselves the world.

And two fold is your share, Earth-shaker.
Tamer of horses and saviour of ships.

Hail Earth-holding,
Deep sea dark maned Poseidon!
Blessed you are, and generous of heart.
Give aid to those who sail upon the sea.

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Poseidon is in some stories the senior brother of Zeus, in others he is the younger brother. Regardless of seniority the brothers Zeus, Poseidon and Aides (with the initial A sound being aspirated, that is pronounced with an H sound - therefore Hades) drew lots.

Zeus won the sky, this can be seen from the etymology of his name, from the PIE Deyus; the day or *dyeu to shine (this is better seen in the Roman name Jupiter which means something very much like the sky father.) Poseidon won the seas, the origin of the name is more problematic, and can mean something like the Husband of the Earth, or (to me more likely) Lord of the Waters. Plato, in his dialogue Cratylus, thought the name could come mean Knowing many things, from Polla eidotos or Polla eidon, but from my amateur efforts this seems to be a going backwards and trying to find the name given in the past from the present. Some others authorities feel Poseidon is an older pre-Greek name, found on Mycenaean tablets at Knossos as po-se-da-wo-ne (Mycenaean alphabet was syllable based, not letters), so from at least 1100 BC. He is associated with Demeter, and is not yet the sea god, but is already at this stage the earth shaker. An obviously important aspect in Ancient Crete. Maybe he came to Greece as Anatolian God of Horses.

The third brother Aides, whose name means 'the unseen', won the kingdom of the underworld, which he ruled with Demeter's daughter Persephone.

It seems as if many of the ancients thought that the earth, was like a plate that floated on the sea. Is this the source of the idea of Poseidon being the earth-holder? I can not say for sure, but intuitively this seems to me to be the case. The sea that Poseidon has rule over is of course the Mediterranean sea, with Okeanus being the river that flows around the entire earth.

One word that caused me considerable consternation was the word atrugetoio. Many of the words of the ancients are remarkably elastic, having many different uses. One thing I have learned in this past year or so of vainly trying to make sense of Ancient Greek, is that there are many Greeks. Many variations on the language. With only a short step back one can see that this is true. The language covers the time frame of, of let us say, 800BC (about the time of Homer and Hesiod) to, again let us arbitrarily say, about 350AD when Constantinople was consecrated. Even here we are talking about long time periods. Constantinople was founded on the location of Byzantium which was first colonised in about 560BC, something like 890 years earlier. England was under the rule of the Normans, in China it was the height of the Song Dynasty, and in France Aberlard was castrated in the equivalent distance, which would be sometime about 1120AD, 890 years ago. The ancient Greek language was spoken over a long period of time, and over a large area, from Sicily to the banks of the Indus. All of this points to a diversity of Greek. And so the basis for my confusion concerning the word atrugetoio.

Once I understood that this was the Homeric version of the genitive case, I was able to make some sense of what was said. The first, and most common translation I got for this word was unfertile, unfruitful. It did seem a bit confusing to call the sea unfertile, but understandable as well. I do not, unlike some commentators, feel that the Greeks did not understand the idea of the riches of the sea, one only has to read some of the old texts, dig around into the cookbooks to understand that sea food was very important to Greek culture. I would think we would have to look at the sea from the eyes of the navigator, the sailor. Or as Coleridge said; in what has become a clichéd construction, "Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink". Autenrieth, in his Homeric Dictionary had a reference to the word meaning restless. This seemed to make sense to me, as a restless ocean can not be harvested. Atrugetos, a later form of the same word is defined as having the prefix 'A' meaning a negative with the word Truge, meaning a crop, harvest, vintage and the like (with hoi epi truge meaning the grape-gatherers.) So this leads us to the literal meaning of not-harvest.

Other dictionaries, while agreeing that Atrugetos is an epitaph for both the sea and the air (aither) explain the word as meaning restless, unwasting. This can easily be extended to mean barren, desolate and the like, and is seen in the Iliad (1.316) (They) sacrificed to Apollo prefect hecatombs of cows and goats on the barren sand beside the sea. Here it describes the sandy beach. Being elastic the word also came to be used to describe death as the 'fruitless night' (of sleep.) My Pocket Oxford Dictionary seems to want to please everyone and uses the definition of unfruitful, desert; ever-fluctuating. In the end, after much tossing and turning I came to land upon desolate. Creating the image of the sea (from the eyes of the nautes) as being a howling wilderness.

Helikon, the mountain of Muses who taught Hesiod how to sing, and home of the fountains Aganippe (as a cult aspect of mare-headed Demeter it means something like 'the mare that destroys mercifully') and Hippocrene (from hippo meaning horse and krene meaning fountain.) Helikon is sacred to Poseidon, maybe in his role as Lord of the Horse. Also sacred to Poseidon is Aigai, mentioned in the Odyssey 5:398 'Content that Odysseus was suffering in the open sea, Poseidon lashed his horses and made his way to Aigai.' also in the Iliad 13.19 'Poseidon strides towards Aigai with the countryside trembling under his feet.'

The final interesting confusion to me was the description of Poseidon as being kuanochaita, or dark blue/purple haired. Kuanos is the word to describe the blue enamel which was used to adorn armour, or lapis lazui, also the dark blue of the ocean and the blue corn flower. So with so much to choose from I had to go with deep sea dark maned. (Although the punk in me wanted to give him purple hair.)


The image is from http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K2.1B.html

The Raptor and the Ravens

A Raptor
Lives in the area.
I watch her
Wide brown winged
Effortless
Still flight.

Flying slow and low
Over the burnt
Summer sun grass.

Suddenly she swoops
And seizes.
Embraces the sky,
Something black
And struggling
Her talons.

Suddenly from
Out of nowhere
A murder of ravens
Chase and harass
Her.

Until she drops
Her burden.
Rapid the robbers
Devour.

I speak with my prodigy.
What can this mean?
What can you foretell?

She stands silent
For several minutes.

All of your work
All of you efforts
Will be gobbled up
The rapacious ones.

Phoibos - the bright one

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Number 21: Apollo

O bright one! 
The swan beats 
time with wide wings, 
And
Loudly sings 
of you 

and settles 
the river bank 
beside
The ever flowing
River 
           Peneios. 

Of Thou;
The sweet sounding singer 
carrying  a clear toned 
lyre

First and last, 
Always 
She sings. 

Hear my rejoicing 
In you,
             Master.
 
I appease you with song.

Straight away I liked the image of the swans flapping wings to bring about a successful landing on the river bank. Singing and keeping time with wing beasts. All in honour of Phoebes Apollo. Phoibos, the bright one. Who was, in revenge for a mocking Eros who was bragging how he was a better shot with the bow, was shot by an arrow of the butt of his humour. Apollo fell in love in Daphne, and like the equally cursed Kassandra, she scorned him.

Daphne, fleeing the lust of Apollo, prayed to her father, Peneios, one of the potamoi. The Potamoi were the 3000 river gods, sons of Oceanus (Okeanos) and Tethys (Tethus). In a short sighted attempt at protecting his daughter, Peneios turned her into a laurel tree. The laurel became sacred to Apollo.

I could not refuse myself the small echo of Heraclitus, in describing the Thessalian river bank where the swan settled.

Hear my rejoicing 
In you,
             Master.

This line caused me some pain. The word in Greek is Anax.

Anax is from an earlier word wanax, which is found on Mycenaean inscriptions, meaning Lord or Master. This word can be found in Homer, and is used to describe Agamemnon, anax andron, leader of men. (Iliad 1,442). Xerxes and Darius are called Lord King. In the tragedy Persians by Aeschylus line 5 we see anax Xerxes basileus. This word is also used in sense of master of the house (oikoio anax); and in a descriptive and telling Homeric simile from the Odyssey (10,216) 'As when the dogs fawn about the lords during a feast.' All of this seemed to me to show a hierarchal relationship. So, as I was forced by dictionaries to choose between lord and master, I chose master. Lord, while fitting, and being the more traditional translation, had a Christian connotation that, for various reasons, I was happy to avoid.



Master has a brutal simplicity, or if you prefer a simple brutality, and this simplicity is able to quickly describe the master/servant relationship of the Deathless Ones (athanatoi) with the Brotoi, the Clots of Gore.

Pleasant enough it is in our easy chair to, while glowing in opium dreams of Swinburne or the more austere Nietzschian tumult, to romanticise the relationship the Greeks had to their gods. To the Deathless humans are mere playthings. Zeus wanted to depopulate the Earth, he brought forth as a conspirator Momus, a scoffer, the personification of reproach, blame and disgrace, or spoke to Eris as the personification of strife. Or maybe it was Themis. It all depends on what you read and take to canonical. Themis being one of those untranslatable characters. She is a Goddess of Order, of 'Doing the Right Thing.' In the Cypria it is the pity that Zeus feels for Gaia that is the origin of the Trojan War. `There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might empty the world. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass.' And Plato agrees `That it is Zeus who has done this, and brought all these things to pass, you do not like to say; for where fear is, there too is shame.' Regardless of how it was brought about we can clearly see that the Gods are only to happy to commit any number of crimes, murders, rapes, kidnappings etc using humans as toys. Leaving a trail of abused and broken mortals in their wake.

Like all good tyrants the Gods cheat when it suits. In a musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, Marsyas had played Apollo to a standstill, with Apollo playing the lyre against the flute of Marsyas. Apollo fearful of losing to a mortal challenged the satyr to play his instrument upside down, and then again while singing along. The flute playing satyr of course could not do these things. Apollo celebrated his victory by flaying Marsyas alive.



So quickly we move from the epiphany of the wide winged swan to the ever present threat of instant death, for the Deathless Ones will brook no insolence. They know their power and are not afraid to use that power, depending on the whim that strikes. Leaving the author of this hymn to beg for the attention and pleasure of Apollo. Like the Homeric fawning dog at the banquet table hoping to appease the master, and so gain a crumb of affection or dinner. Much like the members of the 99%.

Or said much much better than I ever could - Rilke First Duino Elegy (coincidentally) Duino is just outside Trieste where Joyce was living at the time.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

Klutotechnes

Homeric Hymn 20 - To Hephaistos

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Sweet voiced Muse
Celebrate with song
Hephaistos, famous
For his cunning devices.

Along with flashing
Grey eyed Athena
He taught the groundlings
Glorious labour.

Formerly
They dwelt
The hollows,
Of mountains.
Like fabulous monsters.

And now:
Thanks to Hephaistos;
Renown for his arts,
They learnt
The many skills that allow
An easy life. Maturing
The cycles of the year
With their own families.

Be gracious Hephaistos.
Deliver prosperity and wealth.

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Hephaistos was the Greek god of (for lack of a better word) technology, artisans, smiths etc. Technology being from a Greek word techne. As a noun it means art, skill, method of doing things, including soothsaying. It also has to 'bad' meaning of cunning. As a verb the meaning is pretty much the same, to make by art, to execute skilfully, also to contrive cunningly. Hephaistos is described as being KLUTOTECHNES - famed for his skill.

As a nod to the reality of the type of work, Hephaistos was lame, walking with golden leg braces he made for himself. Robert Graves says that smithies were often made lame to keep them from running away, I do not know enough to comment on this, however I do know enough about the harsh reality of hard manual work to see the obvious link. It made be hard for us to understand, but metal working would have been seen as something much like magic for the ancients, agreeing with Arthur Clarke's third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Some say that Hephaistos was the child of Hera and Zeus, while other tales have him born parthenogenetically from Hera alone. Either way the child was ugly, and in embarrassment Hera threw him from Olympus. He lived under the sea in the grotto of Thetis (later the mother of Achilles) for nine years. Later Hera was reconciled with him, and he returned to Olympus, and given Aphrodite as his bride, who later cockculed him with Ares. In revenge Hephaistos made a strong net of golden thread capturing the illicit lovers, and causing much laughter among the other gods.

Hephaistos sided with Hera in opposition to Zeus, and he was again cast out of Olympus, falling for nine days, landing on the island of Lemnos, which in antiquity was the site of volcanic activity. (Later the island was used as a base for the ill fated Gallipoli campaign in 1915.) After Zeus relented in his anger Dionysus was sent to retrieve him, and getting him drunk her brought him back to Olympus on a donkey, this being a popular scene in Athenian vase paintings.

Hephaistos shared a temple with Athena, as she was the goddess of cunning in warfare. Some suggest that the name Hephaistos means he who shines in the day time, while Athena was a moon goddess, with the owl as her symbol. Every year, on the last day of the Pyanopsion (in November), there was a joint festival, where the Arrephoroi, young girls (aged 7 to 11) set up the loom that would be used to make a peplos for the statue of Athena. The festival was also in honour of artisans.

The Old Men of Argos Huddle in Terror

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From Aeschylus tragedy Agamemnon, Line 1020.

Over the weekend there were two football grand finals on television. On the Saturday Geelong and Collingwood struggled in a close run thing for three quarters until the Cats skipped away and won the game. On the Sunday Manly defeated the Warriors. On the Sunday night, for reasons which had nothing to do with football, I was unable to sleep. Having not much else to do, I read the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. More exciting than football, the creative spark forced me from my bed. I am not fluent in my translations, one could compare my technique to a person attempting to solve a cryptic crossword. My lack of skill or fluency does not stop me, for my main goal is to learn and to gain fluency. In this instance the only way to learn is to read.

This piece is from Agamemnon, the first part of the Oresteia. A wonderful, brutal, strange and powerful work. Agamemnon has just returned home from the long war against Troy. Home to Argos and to his wife Klutaimnestra, who has set herself on killing him. She feels she is in the right, as he sacrificed (murdered) their daughter Iphigeneia. She was sacrificed to allow the Greeks to launch their campaign against Troy. For ten years the war dragged on, and for ten years Klutaimnestra, the wife of Agamemnon and mother of Iphigeneia, nurtured her hatred and desire for vengeance. Who could blame her? Even the old men of Argos agree 'blame is present against blame, difficult it is to judge. He endures who is enduring, the killer has to pay.'

Using flattering words, a warm bath, and a krater of drugged wine, wielding her sword and a net, Klutaimnestra rolled out the wine dark carpet for the returning hero. She stabbed him twice and killed him. Splattered with blood she plunged the sword a third thrust to convince herself that the deed had been done.

This passage is from one of the songs of the Chorus of Old Men. The old men sense that something is amiss, but unlike the audience they do not know what is to come to pass. They are fearful for Agamemnon as he strides across the barbaric carpets. He seems to be taking on the manners of the East, of the Trojan king Priam. Klutaimnestra appeals to his vanity by telling him that the feet of a hero should not touch the dirt. The old men see this an affront. The red carpets flow from the palace doors and across the stage. The Phoenician carpets call to mind the wine dark blood which has flowed across generations of the House of Atreus and which will soon flow again. The old men are scared and they sing a long passage, of which I cut out a bit to make a (hopefully) nice little poem. In ripping fifteen or so lines out of a much larger poem I can only do violence to the original, but I have endeavoured to minimise the harm.

Robert Browning is not much spoken abut these days, but he was insightful in many ways. I agree with him in the spellings that he uses, for instance I much prefer Klutaimnestra to Clytaemnestra, Kassandra to Cassandra. He did some very literal translations from the Greek. He did this in opposition to current ideas about the beauty of the Greek language. In this he showed ancient Greek to be a highly flexible, and at the same time sparse language. This sparseness, which is increased by the heightened language of the tragic form, is a peg that allows the translator to hang any garment desired, be it gaudy or plain. I think this was the point that Browning tried to make in his, even to this day, despised translation of Agamemnon.

As a example let us look at the last line of this passage (line 1034), in Greek it reads, Zopuroumenas frenos. From the dictionary we find out that Zopuroumenas means kindle into flame and frenos meaning midriff, or breast and by extension heart, mind, sense etc. (As an aside Zopuroumenas can also mean kindle into life, as in the quickening of the embryo.) In Browning we get 'the enkindling mind.' From E. D. A. Morshead we get 'my soul is prophecy and flame' which Robert Fagles in turn translates as '...and the brain is swarming, burning.' Which is best? Which is most correct? Which is nearest to the mind of Aeschylus?

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The Old Men of Argos Huddle in Terror.

Once upon the earth
One's life blood black.
Can anyone with charms
Sing it back?

Once there was one who rightly knew
How to call back the dead.
Fearful Zeus struck him
Thunderbolt dead.

Had not the deathless
Arrayed our portion
Against another,
Bright laughter
Would burst forth.
Outracing
My heart.

Now
However
The lower gloom
Beneath the darkness.
Sick at heart,
I murmur and grumble.
Unable to hope
For that opportune day
To unravel, and so
Bring to an end.

Kindled my heart leaps into flame!

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The pic is from http://www.theoi.com/image/F6.1Artemis.jpg