#epigrams — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #epigrams, aggregated by home.social.
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From @joannechocolat
#Anyte of Tegea (#Greece: early 3rd century BC) was an Arcadian poet. She is named as one of the nine outstanding women poets of antiquity by Antipater of Thessalonica in the Palatine Anthology.
No reliable information about her life survives, and she can only be approximately dated by the style of her work. She was known for her #epigrams, and she introduced rural themes to the genre.
Only one story about Anyte's life is preserved. #Pausanias claims that Anyte was once visited by the god #Asclepius while she was asleep, and told to go to Naupactus to visit a certain blind man there. On doing so, the man was cured, and he built a temple to Asclepius.
Though so little is known about Anyte's life, more of her #poetry survives than any other ancient #Greek woman, with the exception of #Sappho.
Personal note: Joanne's 'Celebrating Women' posts never fail to send me down *multiple* rabbit holes, and this one was a veritable warren of warrens! 😄 But interesting!
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Epigrams are witty, often paradoxical statements that make a clever point. They tend to be more literary and satirical.
Aphorisms are more straightforward wisdom statements, often about how to live or work. They’re practical principles condensed into memorable form.
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Armand D'Angour's recent posting of a lyric of Anacreon (https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c2i5hfc7ezyxfuhjt2a27f4y/post/3ltfcqpn2zc27) reminded me of reading a sepulchral epigram of Callimachus when I was a schoolboy:
Δωδεκέτη τὸν παῖδα πατὴρ ἀπέθηκε Φίλιππος ἐνθάδε, τὴν πολλὴν ἐλπίδα, Νικοτέλην
Here's a computer generated phonemic transcription:
dɔː.de.ké.tɛː tòn pâi̯.da pa.tɛ̀ːr a.pé.tʰɛː.ke pʰí.lip.pos en.tʰá.de, tɛ̀ːn pol.lɛ̀ːn el.pí.da ni.ko.té.lɛːn
Translation:
Here Philippos, a father, laid his twelve year old son, his great hope, Nikoteles.
As a teenager, I was struck by the elegant simplicity and pathos of these lines.
Decades later, as a parent, the pathos of the lines strikes me so much more deeply. I also feel a bond both with Philippos, separated as we are by oceans and millennia, and with my younger self, sensitive in adolescent way to the pathos, yet then unacquainted with the paternal emotions stirring that father's grief and disappointment. A triad of sensibility....
"Um, actually," I hear some reply guy ask, "are you sure that Philippos and his son even existed and that they're not just fictions created by Callimachus?"
I'm not sure, because I don't know enough about this literature, but I'm also not sure if anybody, even amongst classical scholars, knows for sure whether these two people had any material existence. I am sure, however, that their material existence or otherwise doesn't matter to me, because as characters, fictional or not, they are real to me; my triad of sensibility endures. But now we're wading into philosophy...
If you can't read the Greek, try your best with the phonemic transcription, so that you can hear the alliteration and repetition of the sound /p/ and that heartbreaking conclusion with the sound of the boy's name.
#Literature #Callimachus #GreekLiterature #Epigrams #Greek #Parenting #Fathers
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i prefer to think in -ishes, but never wishes, for more than everything comes partial, while nothingish comes whole.
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Tisana calda, maglione.
Sul balcone a guardare l'eruzione.
