Greek Texts & Translations

The Greeks sometimes exalted friendship to a passion, and such a friendship doubtless inspired this fine poem. Theocritus acknowledges his indebtedness to the Ionian lyrists and elegists by using their dialect. The passage rendered here in verse contains what at first sight looks like a mere display of learning, but has simply this intention: ‘Our love will be famous among so remote a posterity that the very words for it will be matter for learned comment.’

12.1 Thou’rt come, dear heart; thou’rt come after two days and nights, albeit one will turn a lover gray. As spring is sweeter than winter, and pippin than damson-plum; as mother-ewe is shaggier than her lambkin, and maiden more to be desired than a thice-wed wife; as the fawn is nimbler-footed than the calf, and the nightingale clearest-tongued of all the wingèd songsters; so am I gladded above all at the sight of thee, and run to thee as a wayfarer runneth to the shady oak when the sun is burning hot. And ‘tis O that equal Loves might inspire thee and me, and we become this song and saying unto all them that follow after: –

12.12 Here were two men of might the antique years among,
The one Inspirant hight i' th’ Amyclaean tongue,
The t’other Fere would be in speech of Thessalye;
Each lov’d each, even-peise: O other golden days,
Wheas love-I love-you all men did hold for true!

12.17 O would to thee, Father Zeus, and to you, unaging Host of Heaven, that when a hundred hundred years shall be passed away, one bring me word upon the prisoning bank of Acheron our love is yet upon every lip, upon the young men’s most of all! Be that or no the People of Heaven shall stablish as they will; for theirs is the dominion; now, when I sing thy praises, there shall no push-o’-leasing ^note rise upon the tip of this tongue; for if e’er thou giv’st me torment, thou healest the wound out of hand, and I am better off than before, seeing I come away with over-measure.

12.27 Heaven rest you glad, Nisaean masters o’ the oar, for that you have done such exceeding honour unto an Attic stranger – to with Diocles ^note (who so loved his boys); about whose grave, so surely as Spring cometh round, your children vie in a kissing-match, and whosoever presseth lip sweetliest upon lip, cometh away to’s mother loaden with garlands. Happy the justicer holdeth that court of kissing! God wot he prays beamy Ganymed, and prays indeed, to make his lips like the touchstones which show the money-changer whether the gold be bold or dross.