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

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

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?

---

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!

---

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

Polytropos

---

Hermes is fast becoming one of my favourite of the ancient Greek gods. Why is that? He is, like Ulysses, referred to as polytropos - being of many turns. Tropos is a word that has several meanings. Many of the words in ancient Greek had to perform many tasks. Most of the definitions of tropos centre around being a turn, a mode, a fashion or a manner. From this we get our modern, maybe overused word trope; meaning a figure of speech.

Versatile. Cunning he was, a thief and a watcher in the night. He stole the cattle of Apollo and built the first lyre from a tortoise shell and the guts of the stolen cattle. A rover and a drover, the bringer of dreams and of good luck. As he is messenger between the gods and mortals he becomes the guardian of boundaries and the guardian of interpretations. He protects harlots and thieves and crones. In his mode (or trope) as messenger he helps travellers and runners. He is often shown as an adolescent in the art works, alluding to role as a guardian of transitions. It was in this role as guardian of boundaries that he suffered the sacrilege referred to as the Destruction of the Hermai. Statues of Hermes had been set up in many places in Athens. These were simple blocks of stone with the head of the god, as well as his exaggerated phallus. These markers were also rumoured to ward off evil. On the eve of the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition unknown vandals smashed off the penis, as well as (even worse) mutilating the face of many of these statues. This was understandably the cause of great anxiety in the city, and in retrospect should have resulted in cancelling the project, which become in many ways the Stalingrad of the ancient world.

Hermes may be an old god, for he is mentioned in Linear B inscriptions found in Knossos and Pylos as e-ma-a. Others traditions say that he may been an import from the East. Although to my thinking it is best to think of the Eastern Mediterranean as being a single culture. Regardless of his origin he was worshiped in the more remote, wild places such as Arcadia. As such he was the patron of farmers and shepherds. Amusing to me to think the laconic dry witted farmer type gave rise to the smooth talking interpreter. From his early shaman origins he would have been involved in divination, of crossing between this world and the other. Evolving into the trickster dream bringing god, and giving us the words hermetic and hermeneutics.

Also it is interesting to compare Kriophoros Hermes (Ram Bearing Hermes) to early Christian imagery of the Good Shepherd. But that is another story for another day.






























Polytropos indeed.

---

Homeric Hymn 17 - To Hermes

Of Cyllenian Hermes I sing! Slayer of Argos,
Guardian of Cyllene and of Arcadia
Rich in flocks of goats and sheep.

Luck bringing messenger of the gods.
Own child of Maia, daughter of Atlas,
Who had intercourse with Zeus.

Bashful she shunned
The crowded tumult
Of the deathless ones.

Into her shaded cavern
Came the son of Kronous.
To the young fair haired
Cutely trimmed new wife.

They made love in the dark
Of the night entwined in her hair

While smoothed limbed
Hera slept sweetly.

They escaped the notice
Of the deathless gods
And the mortal ones.

Of you I rejoice,
Son of Zeus and Maia
Of you I begin,
And so pass over
To other melodies.

Rejoice!
Joy giving guide,
Bringer of good luck.


pictures are from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0007MAN-Herma.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hermes_crioforo.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Good.Shepherd.Vatican.Museum.jpg

Apis the Egyptian brought medicine

Homeric Hymn 16 - To Asklepius

I begin to sing of the Healer of diseases Asklepius
Son of Apollo, born through Koronis, daughter of Phlegyas,
In the Dotian plain. A great joy to the mortals,
Soother of the evil pains.

Rejoice Lord, my prayer to you is my song.

---

Asklepius was god of medicine. His father was Apollo and his mother Koronis. One tradition relates that she died in childbirth, and Apollo took the baby from her womb. The flames of the pyre parting, allowing him to tear his dead lovers belly open. Another, more brutal, tale tells how after intercourse Koronis spurned Apollo for another. He then killed her, maybe with his hands, maybe with his bow. In both variants the child was torn from Koronis and given to the centaur Chiron to be raised. This Caesarian birth also explains the god's name which means something like 'cut from' (or then again maybe not.) The child was taught medicine, and so became a great doctor. During his adventures, Athena gave him some of the blood from the right side of the gorgon, which gave the power to raise the dead. Blood from the left side, being of course deadly.

With this power came the downfall of Asklepius. Maybe he was killed because raising the dead angered cloud-gathering Zeus, or maybe Hades fearing his kingdom would be emptied had a word to Zeus and angered up his blood. I prefer the version where he was killed for charging money for raising the dead. For the warmth and light of the sun, then plants that grow from the fields, the rivers that flood and revitalise the land, and this and more are freely given by the gods. Not, as in Christian thought, because the gods love us, but rather it shows how much more powerful the gods are than us puny mortals.

And in anger for killing his son, Phoibos Apollo killed the Cyclops who had made the murderous thunderbolt.

An Argonaut, Asklepius was married to Epione, the soother of pains, and they had six daughters.

• Hygeia - goddess of hygiene and cleanliness
  
• Meditrina - the serpent bearer (goddess of the healing power of wine in Roman times)
  
• Panakeia - goddess of cures (literally all-healing)
  
• Akeso - goddess of healing process
  
• Iaso - goddess of recuperation
  
• Aigle - whose name is Radiance.
  

They also had three sons.
Podalirius, Machaon who. as unsuccessful suitors of Helen were bound. As soldiers and surgeons they raised thirty ships to fight at windy Ilium.
Also Telesphorus, the possibly Celtic, dwarf whose name means bring to fulfilment.

Asklepius had a staff with one snake wrapped round it (not the staff of Hermes, the Caduceus which has two snakes, and is sometimes mistakenly used as a medical symbol), this may symbolise the 'straight' path of health, compared to the contortions caused by illness. Temples built to honour him were similar to, and very different from, modern hospitals. Snakes, sacred to Asklepius, and used in treatment, slithered the wards where opium was used to allow surgery to take place.

---

the pic is from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Asclepius_and_hygieia_relief.jpg

Nepenthes

image from http://www.minervaclassics.com/tthhconc.htm

---

Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda thought.
She ached with their sorrow, she straightaway threw
Into the wine charming herbs. Then they would be
Drinking soothing sorrows, allaying anger
And the forgetting of all evil.
She in the krater mixt and all gulped down
The wine. And not for the whole day through
Would tears fall down their cheeks. Not even
If his Mother or Father fell down to death,
Nor is his bother, nor his beloved son were
Hacked to pieces shining blades in front his eyes.
Such was the knowledge of herbs the daughter
Egg hatched of cloud gathering Zeus, learnt from
Poludamna, she who overcomes many,
Wife of the Egyptian Thonos. A great many
Sorts of herbs bring forth the corn bearing land.
Many are mingled and overcome disease,
Others overcome and bring misery.

All the Egyptians understand and are healers
For they are all of the time of Paieon.

---

Remains of the temple to Menelaus and Helen in Sparta - image from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/51879369



Helen is a favourite character of mine, not because of her alleged beauty, although I must admit that would surely be part of it. She was the daughter of Leda and Zeus. The cloud gatherer raped Leda and she gave 'birth' to two eggs. Out of one egg came the twins Castor and Polydeuces or the Dioskouroi. From the other egg came Helen and her sister Clytaemnestra. Clytaemnestra is an even more interesting character than Helen, and will hopefully be the topic of a later piece. Suffice to say she is one of the strongest women in Greek mythology, and her tale is the subject of the wonderful Orestia trilogy of Aeschylus, who died in Sicily when an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a rock, dropped a tortoise on it, hoping to crack the thick shell open.

We all know the tale of Helen. How Zeus wished to kill off the humans, and so allowed Eris, the personification of Strife, to roll the apple of discord inscribed with the one word Kalliste (the dative, or indirect object superlative of the word fair or beautiful, so it means to the fairest) amid the three goddesses Hera, Aphrodite and Athena. To settle the argument Paris was asked to be the judge. He was bribed with the hand of Helen in marriage. And this lead to the Trojan war.

What intrigues me in all this, is the tale told by Herodotus (book 2, 120) that Helen was never in Troy, but rather in Egypt. Ten years of war and sorrow and death followed. Much like the WMD and the war in Iraq. (As an aside I hope I live long enough to see the secret papers of the Australian cabinet released, petty maybe - but we all need a goal.)

This section I have translated is from the Odyssey, Book 4 starting at line 219. It tells of Telemachus searching for information about his long absent father. He goes to Sparta to speak with Menelaus, and the discussions of what happened during and after the war make them sad. Helen then adds some drugs to their wine, and this seems to be some type of opiod which defeats their sorrow. So strong it is that one would not even shed a tear to see their children hacked to pieces in front of them. Pretty strong stuff indeed.

Some points to consider. Poludamna means 'she overcomes many' - overcoming disease or overcoming life. The Greek word used has many meanings, but they seem to revolve around the idea of taming, and is used to describe making a wife. The word Nepenthes is something like soothing sorrows. I used the word charming, as it is one of the epithets Homer uses to describe Troy. The word Chalko (the ch is pronounced like in the Scottish loch, and the O at the end is the letter omega, long or big O - so it is the long O sound) means copper, but is used in this situation in the same way we would say a person was gunned down.

Unless you are a Greek geek you will probably not enjoy this as much as I enjoyed translating, but either way I hope you enjoy.