/lit/ - Literature

>>23392799

>>22112667
Martial's Erotion the slave-girl made me a little teary-eyed

To your shades Fronto, and Flacilla, this child

I commend: she was my sweet and my delight.

Little Erotion shall not fear the darkened shades

nor the vast mouths of the Tartarean hound.

She’d have completed her sixth chill winter,

if she’d not lived a mere six days too few.

Now let her frisk and play among old friends

now let her chatter, and so lisp my name.

And let the soft turf cover her brittle bones:

earth, lie lightly on her: she lay lightly on you.

To your shades Fronto, and Flacilla, this child
I commend: she was my sweet and my delight.
Little Erotion shall not fear the darkened shades
nor the vast mouths of the Tartarean hound.
She’d have completed her sixth chill winter,
if she’d not lived a mere six days too few.
Now let her frisk and play among old friends
now let her chatter, and so lisp my name.
And let the soft turf cover her brittle bones:
earth, lie lightly on her: she lay lightly on you.

~Martial
Translation by A.S. Klyne

>Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there
lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears . . .
319 It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus’ dog
320 he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus’ serving-men
could cart it off to manure the king’s estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,
here lay the hound, old Argos.
330 But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side
and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus,
diverting his friend in a hasty, offhand way:
“Strange, Eumaeus, look, a dog like this,
lying here on a dung-hill . . .
what handsome lines! But I can’t say for sure
if he had the running speed to match his looks
340 or he was only the sort that gentry spoil at table,
show-dogs masters pamper for their points.”
You told the stranger, Eumaeus, loyal swineherd,
“Here —it’s all too true —here’s the dog of a man
who died in foreign parts. But if he had now
the form and flair he had in his glory days —
as Odysseus left him, sailing off to Troy —
you’d be amazed to see such speed, such strength.
No quarry he chased in the deepest, darkest woods
could ever slip this hound. A champion tracker too!
350 Ah, but he’s run out of luck now, poor fellow . . .
his master’s dead and gone, so far from home,
and the heartless women tend him not at all. Slaves,
with their lords no longer there to crack the whip,
lose all zest to perform their duties well. Zeus,
the Old Thunderer, robs a man of half his virtue
the day the yoke clamps down around his neck.”
With that he entered the well-constructed palace,
strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.
But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos’ eyes
360 the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away.