7 Greeks

by Guy Davenport

  79 There is madness in the Sibyl’s voice, her words are gloomy, ugly, and rough, but they are true for a thousand years, because a god speaks through her.

  80 All men think.

  81 All men should speak clearly and logically, and thus share rational discourse and have a body of thought in common, as the people of a city are all under the same laws. The laws of men derive from the divine law, which is whole and single, which penetrates as it will to satisfy human purposes, but is mightier than any law known to men.

  82 Defend the law as you would the city wall.

  83 Law gives the people a single will to obey.

  84 One man, to my way of thinking, is worth ten thousand, if he’s the best of his kind.

  85 The best of men see only one thing worth having: undying fame. They prefer fame to wealth. The majority of men graze like cattle.

  86 Those killed by Ares are honored by gods and men.

  87 The man of greatest reputation knows how to defend a reputation.

  88 Extinguish pride as quickly as you would a fire.

  89 To do the same thing over and over is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

  90 Dogs bark at strangers.

  91 What do they have for intellect, for common sense, who believe the myths of public singers and flock with the crowd as if public opinion were a teacher, forgetting that the many are bad, the few are good [there are many bad people, few good ones]?

  92 All men are equally mystified by unaccountable evidence, even Homer, wisest of the Greeks. He was mystified by children catching lice. He heard them say, What we have found and caught we throw away; what we have not found and caught we still have.

  93 Homer should be thrown out of the games and whipped, and Archilochos with him.

  94 Good days and bad days, says Hesiod, forgetting that all days are alike.

  95 The Ephesians might as well all hang themselves and let the city be governed by children. They have banished Hermadoros, best of their citizens, because they cannot abide to have among them a man so much better than they are.

  96 Ephesians, be rich! I cannot wish you worse.

  97 Life is bitter and fatal, yet men cherish it and beget children to suffer the same fate.

  98 Opposites cooperate. The beautifullest harmonies come from opposition. All things repel each other.

  99 We know health by illness, good by evil, satisfaction by hunger, leisure by fatigue.

  100 Except for what things would we never have heard the word justice?

  101 Sea water is both fresh and foul: excellent for fish, poison to men.

  102 Asses would rather have hay than gold.

  103 Pigs wash in mud, chickens in dust.

  104 The handsomest ape is uglier than the ugliest man. The wisest man is less wise, less beautiful than a god: the distance from ape to man is that from man to god.

  105 A boy is to a man as a man is to a god.

  106 To God all is beautiful, good, and as it should be. Man must see things as either good or bad.

  107 Having cut, burned and poisoned the sick, the doctor then submits his bill.

  108 The same road goes both up and down.

  109 The beginning of a circle is also its end.

  110 The river we stepped into is not the river in which we stand.

  111 Curled wool, straight thread.

  112 Joints are and are not parts of the body. They cooperate through opposition, and make a harmony of separate forces. Wholeness arises from distinct particulars; distinct particulars occur in wholeness.

  113 To live is to die, to be awake is to sleep, to be young is to be old, for the one flows into the other, and the process is capable of being reversed.

  114 Hesiod, so wise a teacher, did not see that night and day are the same.

  115 A bow is alive only when it kills.

  116 The unseen design of things is more harmonious than the seen.

  117 We do not notice how opposing forces agree. Look at the bow and the lyre.

  118 Not I but the world says it: All is one.

  119 Wisdom alone is whole, and is both willing and unwilling to be named Zeus.

  120 Wisdom is whole: the knowledge of how things are plotted in their courses by all other things.

  121 God is day night winter summer war peace enough too little, but disguised in each and known in each by a separate flavor.

  122 The sun will never change the rhythm of its motion. If it did, the Erinyes, agents of justice, would bring it to trial.

  123 All things come in seasons.

  124 Even sleeping men are doing the world’s business and helping it along.

  DIOGENES

  1 I have come to debase the coinage.

  2 All things belong to the gods. Friends own things in common. Good men are friends of the gods. All things belong to the good.

  3 Men nowhere, but real boys at Sparta.

  4 I am a yapping Maltese lap dog when hungry, a Molossian wolfhound when fed, breeds tedious to hunt with but useful for guarding the house and the sheepfold.

  5 No one can live with me as a companion: it would be too inconvenient.

  6 It is absurd to bring back a runaway slave. If a slave can survive without a master, is it not awful to admit that the master cannot live without the slave?

  7 I am a citizen of the world.

  8 We are not as hardy, free, or accomplished as animals.

  9 If only I could free myself from hunger as easily as from desire.

  10 Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

  11 Demosthenes is a Scythian in his speeches and a gentleman on the battlefield.

  12 The darkest place in the tavern is the most conspicuous.

  13 I am Athens’ one free man.

  14 The porches and streets of Athens were built for me as a place to live.

  15 I learned from the mice how to get along: no rent, no taxes, no grocery bill.

  16 Plato winces when I track dust across his rugs: he knows that I’m walking on his vanity.

  17 How proud you are of not being proud, Plato says, and I reply that there is pride and pride.

  18 When I die, throw me to the wolves. I’m used to it.

  19 A man keeps and feeds a lion. The lion owns a man.

  20 The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

  21 Everything is of one substance. It is custom, not reason, that sets the temple apart from the house, mutton from human flesh for the table, bread from vegetable, vegetable from meat.

  22 Antisthenes made me an exiled beggar dressed in rags: wise, independent, and content.

  23 It is luckier to be a Megarian’s ram than his son.

  24 Before begging it is useful to practice on statues.

  25 When the Sinopians ostracized me from Pontos, they condemned themselves to a life without me.

  26 Aristotle dines at King Philip’s convenience, Diogenes at his own.

  27 When Plato said that if I’d gone to the Sicilian court as I was invited, I wouldn’t have to wash lettuce for a living, I replied that if he washed lettuce for a living he wouldn’t have had to go to the Sicilian court.

  28 Philosophy can turn a young man from the love of a beautiful body to the love of a beautiful mind.

  29 When I was captured behind the Macedonian lines and taken before Philip as a spy, I said that I’d only come to see how big a fool a King can be.

  30 A. I am Alexander the Great.

  B. I am Diogenes, the dog.

  A. The dog?

  B. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite louts.

  A. What can I do for you?

  B. Stand out of my light.

  31 To live is not itself an evil, as has been claimed, but to lead a worthless life is.

  32 They laugh at me, but I’m not laughed at.

  33 Great crowds at the Olympic games, but not of people.

  34 The Shahinshah of Persia moves in pomp from Susa in the sprin
g, from Babylon in the winter, from Media in the summer, and Diogenes walks every year from Athens to Corinth, and back again from Corinth to Athens.

  35 I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.

  36 Go into any whorehouse and learn the worthlessness of the expensive.

  37 We can only explain you, young man, by assuming that your father was drunk the night he begot you.

  38 Can you believe that Pataikion the thief will fare better in Elysion because of his initiation into the Mysteries than Epameinondas the Pythagorean?

  39 One wrong will not balance another: to be honorable and just is our only defense against men without honor or justice.

  40 To be saved from folly you need either kind friends or fierce enemies.

  41 Watching a mouse can cure you of jealousy of others’ good fortune.

  42 There is no stick hard enough to drive me away from a man from whom I can learn something.

  43 Eukleidos’ lectures limp and sprawl, Plato’s are tedious, tragedies are quarrels before an audience, and politicians are magnified butlers.

  44 Watch a doctor, philosopher, or helmsman, and you will conclude that man is the most intelligent of the animals, but then, regard the psychiatrist and the astrologer and their clients, and those who think they are superior because they are rich. Can creation display a greater fool than man?

  45 Reason or a halter.

  46 Why Syrakousa, friend Plato? Are not the olives in Attika just as toothsome?

  47 Plato’s philosophy is an endless conversation.

  48 Beg a cup of wine from Plato and he will send you a whole jar. He does not give as he is asked, nor answer as he is questioned.

  49 Share a dish of dried figs with Plato and he will take them all.

  50 Grammarians without any character at all lecture us on that of Odysseus.

  51 The contest that should be for truth and virtue is for sway and belongings instead.

  52 Happy the man who thinks to marry and changes his mind, who plans a voyage he does not take, who runs for office but withdraws his name, who wants to belong to the circle of an influential man, but is excluded.

  53 A friend’s hand is open.

  54 Bury me prone: I have always faced the other way.

  55 Raising sons: teach them poetry, history, and philosophy. Geometry and music are not essential, and can be learned later. Teach them to ride a horse, to shoot a true bow, to master the slingshot and javelin. At the gymnasium they should exercise only so much as gives them a good color and a trim body. Teach them to wait upon themselves at home, and to enjoy ordinary food, and to drink water rather than wine. Crop their hair close. No ornaments. Have them wear a thin smock, go barefoot, be silent, and never gawk at people on the street.

  56 In the rich man’s house there is no place to spit but in his face.

  57 The luxurious have made frugality an affliction.

  58 I’m turning that invitation down: the last time I was there, they were not thankful enough that I came.

  59 When some strangers to Athens asked me to show them Demosthenes, I gave them the finger, so that they would know what it felt like to meet him.

  60 A choirmaster pitches the note higher than he knows the choristers can manage. So do I.

  61 Go about with your middle finger up and people will say you’re daft; go about with your little finger out, and they will cultivate your acquaintance.

  62 For three thousand drachmas you can get a statue, for two coppers a quart of barley.

  63 Masters should obey their slaves; patients, their doctors; rivers, their banks.

  64 Against fate I put courage; against custom, nature; against passion, reason.

  65 Toadying extends even to Diogenes, I say to the mice who nibble my crumbs.

  66 Even with a lamp in broad daylight I cannot find an honest man.

  67 There are gods. How else explain people like Lysias the apothecary on whom the gods have so obviously turned their backs?

  68 You can no more improve yourself by sacrificing at the altar than you can correct your grammar.

  69 We are more curious about the meaning of dreams than about things we see when awake.

  70 Pilfering treasury property is particularly dangerous: big thieves are ruthless in punishing little thieves.

  71 It is not for charity but my salary that I beg in the streets.

  72 Had to lift its skirt to see whether man or woman had stopped me to talk philosophy.

  73 I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?

  74 Pitching heeltaps: the better you are at it, the worse for you.

  75 You know the kind of luckless folk we call triple wretches. Well, these professors and others of that kidney who long to be known as famous lecturers are triple Greeks.

  76 The ignorant rich, sheep with golden fleeces.

  77 The athlete’s brain, like his body, is as strong as that of a bull.

  78 Love of money is the marketplace for every evil.

  79 A good man is a picture of a god.

  80 Running errands for Eros is the business of the idle.

  81 The greatest misery is to be old, poor, and alone.

  82 The deadliest bite among wild animals is that of the boot-licker; amongst tame, that of the flatterer.

  83 Choked on the honey of flattery.

  84 The stomach is our life’s Charybdis.

  85 The golden Aphrodite that Phryne put up at Delphoi should be inscribed Greek Lechery, Its Monument.

  86 A pretty whore is poisoned honey.

  87 If, as they say, I am only an ignorant man trying to be a philosopher, then that may be what a philosopher is.

  88 People who talk well but do nothing are like musical instruments: the sound is all they have to offer.

  89 Aren’t you ashamed, I said to the prissy young man, to assume a lower rank in nature than you were given?

  90 Be careful that your pomade doesn’t cause the rest of you to stink.

  91 Why do we call house slaves footmen? Well, it’s because they are men and they have feet.

  92 What lovers really enjoy are their spats and the disapproval of society.

  93 Beggars get handouts before philosophers because people have some idea of what it’s like to be blind and lame.

  94 If your cloak was a gift, I appreciate it; if it was a loan, I’m not through with it yet.

  95 Why praise Diokles for giving me a drachma and not me for deserving it?

  96 I have seen the victor Dioxippos subdue all contenders at Olympia and be thrown on his back by the glance of a girl.

  97 To own nothing is the beginning of happiness.

  98 Every day’s a festival to the upright.

  99 Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves?

  100 I had my lunch in the courtroom because that’s where I was hungry.

  101 It is a convenience not to fear the dark.

  102 Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves, whistle and dance the shimmy, and you’ve got an audience.

  103 After grace and a prayer for health, the banqueters set to and eat themselves into an apoplexy.

  104 To a woman who had flopped down before an altar with her butt in the air I remarked in passing that the god was also behind her.

  105 At Khrysippos’ lecture I saw the blank space coming up on the scroll, and said to the audience: Cheer up, fellows, land is in sight!

  106 We have complicated every simple gift of the gods.

  107 Make passes at you, do they? Why, then, don’t you wear clothes that don’t so accurately outline what they’re interested in?

  108 After a visit to the baths, where do you go to have a wash?

  109 I’ve seen Plato’s cups and table, but not his cupness and tableness.

  110 If you’ve turned yourself out so handsomely, young man, for men, it’s unfortunate; if for women, it’s unfair.

  111 A blush is the color of virtue.

  112 A lecher is a fig tree
on a cliff: crows get the figs.

  113 The road from Sparta to Athens is like the passageway in a house from the men’s rooms to the women’s.

  114 An obol now, friend, and when the community asks you to contribute for my funeral, you can say that you’ve already given.

  115 I was once as young and silly as you are now, but I doubt if you will become as old and wise as I am.

  116 Begging from fat Anaximenes, I argued what an advantage it would be to him to share the makings of that paunch with the poor.

  117 There is no society without law, no civilization without a city.

  118 The only real commonwealth is the whole world.

  119 Practice makes perfect.

  120 Learn the pleasure of despising pleasure.

  121 Education disciplines the young, comforts the old, is the wealth of the poor, and civilizes the rich.

  122 The greatest beauty of human kind is frankness.

  123 Plato begs too, but like Telemakhos conversing with Athena, with lowered head, so that others may not overhear.

  124 Give up philosophy because I’m an old man? It’s at the end of a race that you break into a burst of speed.

  HERONDAS

  I. The Matchmaker

  (The actor sets out his traps while his boy beats a jangling tambourine which, as an audience gathers, gives way to a sprightly jig on a flute. The actor places two stools and opens his box of props and costumes. He dons a dress, a wig, a stole. His eyes are made up female. He trots primly, with swaying bips, to one of the stools, giving a glad eye to the audience on the way. He settles himself, arranges the stole with pompous dignity, bats his eyes, purses his lips, consults an imaginary hand mirror, and becomes an important matron serenely at home. She holds this pose until the boy raps on the box, whereupon her composure is shattered and she yelps on a high note.)

  METRIKHÉ

  Threissa! Somebody's knocking at the front.

  Go see if it’s not a country peddler

  Selling door to door.

  (Actor tosses his stole and wig to the boy, deftly catching a wig of younger, girlish hair, and an apron. He springs to the imaginary door, wiping his hands on the apron, looking dumb and scared. His accent becomes lower class and Thracian. He talks through the closed door.)