



Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at
http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made
available by the Internet Archive.)





LOVE, WORSHIP AND DEATH

Some renderings from the Greek Anthology

BY

SIR RENNELL RODD


AUTHOR OF

'BALLADS OF THE FLEET'

'THE VIOLET CROWN,' ETC.



LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

1916




INTRODUCTION


Among the many diverse forms of expression in which the Greek genius has
been revealed to us, that which is preserved in the lyrics of the
anthology most typically reflects the familiar life of men, the thought
and feeling of every day in the lost ancient world. These little flowers
of song reveal, as does no other phase of that great literature, a
personal outlook on life, kindly, direct and simple, the tenderness
which characterised family relations, the reciprocal affection of master
and slave, sympathy with the domestic animals, a generous sense of the
obligations of friendship, a gentle piety and a close intimacy with the
nature gods, of whose presence, malignant or benign, the Greek was ever
sensitively conscious. For these reasons they still make so vivid an
appeal to us after a long silence of many centuries. To myself who have
lived for some years in that enchanted world of Greece, and have sailed
from island to island of its haunted seas, the shores have seemed still
quick with the voices of those gracious presences who gave exquisite
form to their thoughts on life and death, their sense of awe and beauty
and love. There indeed poetry seems the appropriate expression of the
environment, and there even still to-day, more than anywhere else in the
world, the correlation of our life with nature may be felt
instinctively; the human soul seems nearest to the soul of the world.

The poems, of which some renderings are here offered to those who cannot
read the originals, cover a period of about a thousand years, broken by
one interval during which the lesser lyre is silent. The poets of the
_elegy_ and the _melos_ appear in due succession after those of the
_epic_ and, significant perhaps of the transition, there are found in
the first great period of the lyric the names of two women, Sappho of
<DW26>s, acknowledged by the unanimous voice of antiquity, which is
confirmed by the quality of a few remaining fragments, to be among the
greatest poets of all times, and Corinna of Tanagra, who contended with
Pindar and rivalled Sappho's mastery. The canon of Alexandria does not
include among the nine greater lyrists the name of Erinna of Rhodes, who
died too young, in the maiden glory of her youth and fame. The earlier
poets of the _melos_ were for the most part natives of

                    'the sprinkled isles,
     Lily on lily that overlace the sea.'

Theirs is the age of the austerer mood, when the clean-cut marble
outlines of a great language matured in its noblest expression. Then a
century of song is followed by the period of the dramatists during which
the lyric muse is almost silent, in an age of political and intellectual
intensity.

A new epoch of lyrical revival is inaugurated by the advent of
Alexander, and the wide extension of Hellenic culture to more distant
areas of the Mediterranean. Then follows the long succession of poets
who may generally be classified as of the school of Alexandria. Among
them are three other women singers of high renown, Anyte of Tegea,
Nossis of Locri in southern Italy, and Moero of Byzantium. The later
writers of this period had lost the graver purity of the first lyric
outburst, but they had gained by a wider range of sympathy and a closer
touch with nature. This group may be said to close with Meleager, who
was born in Syria and educated at Tyre, whose contact with the eastern
world explains a certain suggestive and exotic fascination in his poetry
which is not strictly Greek. The Alexandrian is followed by the Roman
period, and the Roman by the Byzantine, in which the spirit of the muse
of Hellas expires reluctantly in an atmosphere of bureaucratic and
religious pedantry.

These few words of introduction should suffice, since the development of
the lyric poetry of Greece and the characteristics of its successive
exponents have been made familiar to English readers in the admirable
work of my friend J.W. Mackail. A reference to his _Select Epigrams from
the Greek Anthology_ suggests one plea of justification for the present
little collection of renderings, since the greater number of them have
been by him translated incomparably well into prose.

Of the quality of verse translation there are many tests: the closeness
with which the intention and atmosphere of the original has been
maintained; the absence of extraneous additions; the omission of no
essential feature, and the interpretation, by such equivalent as most
adequately corresponds, of individualities of style and assonances of
language. But not the least essential justification of poetical
translation is that the version should constitute a poem on its own
account, worthy to stand by itself on its own merits if the reader were
unaware that it was a translation. It is to this test especially that
renderings in verse too often fail to conform. I have discarded not a
few because they seemed too obviously to bear the forced expression
which the effort to interpret is apt to induce. Of those that remain
some at least I hope approach the desired standard, failing to achieve
which they would undoubtedly be better expressed in simple prose. And
yet there is a value in rendering rhythm by rhythm where it is possible,
and if any success has been attained, such translations probably convey
more of the spirit of the original, which meant verse, with all which
that implies, and not prose.

The arrangement in this little volume is approximately chronological in
sequence. This should serve to illustrate the severe and restrained
simplicity of the earlier writers as contrasted with the more complex
and conscious thought, and the more elaborate expression of later
centuries when the horizons of Hellenism had been vastly extended.

The interpretation of these