Santorini

It's winter here.  Yesterday morning at dawn it was -1C on the verandah, today it was +1C.  And out house heating is STILL broken.

I am dreaming of somewhere warm, with blue skies and whitewashed walls.  Santorini would do very nicely.  Now all I have to do is find the money!

Achilles weeps for Patroclus

So the fighting raged, while swift-footed Antilochus brought the news to Achilles. He found him in front of the high-sterned ships, agonising over the war, communing anxiously with his proud heart: ‘What woe is this? Why are the long-haired Greeks in flight? Why are they being driven back once more from the plain to the ships? Is this another sorrow sent by the gods, one that my mother prophesied? Did she not say that while I still lived the best of the Myrmidons would forgo the light of day at Trojan hands? Is Patroclus dead, in his rashness: despite my warning, to return to the ships once the fire was out, and not to battle Hector?’

He was lost like this in reflection, when Antilochus, bathed in scalding tears, brought the bitter news: ‘Alas, warlike son of Peleus, sad are the tidings you must hear. Would it were not so, but Patroclus has fallen, and they fight over his corpse, his naked corpse, for Hector of the gleaming helm has your armour.’

At these words, a black cloud of grief shrouded Achilles. Grasping handfuls of dark sand and ash, he poured them over his head and handsome face, soiling his scented tunic. Then he flung himself in the dust, and lying there outstretched, a fallen giant, tore and fouled his hair. The slave girls he and Patroclus had seized as prizes, shrieked with alarm, and ran to warlike Achilles, beating their breasts and sinking to the ground beside him. Antilochus, weeping and groaning, grasped Achilles’ hand, fearing he might take his knife and cut his own throat, so heart-felt was his noble grief.

[Translation from A S Kline's Poetry in Translation]

Greek god

It was the curly hair which made me think of it.

I remember

Three years ago today, a dear friend died too young, much too young, after a year-long illness.  I haven't forgotten him nor ever will I, I suspect.  I miss ya, my dear.

Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή

Not that that brings any comfort.

Dieux du Stade

Gods of the stadium.

How beautiful well-kept young men can be.  The Athenian pattern (though not the Macedonian, hence Alexander the Great's lifelong love affair with Hephaistion)  was for an older man to love a younger.  The terms were erastes for the older "dominant" lover,  and eromenos (which means the loved one) for the younger.  Such a relationship is beautifully described in Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine.

As for me, I don't need to have sex with these guys.  I love looking at them though.  They are beautiful.  Kaloi eisin.  I think the Greeks would have agreed.

Dark Haired Babe

This guy is so gorgeous.  And to add to his attraction, he's wearing a thong underneath his jeans.  They always showcase a man's (or a woman's) bum better than any other kind of underwear, provided there's something to show off about.

I love it that he's not too muscly; that his body hair is thick enough to brush with your hands, but not too thick; I love the curve of his eyebrows and their thickness; the faint flush to his face; his perfect neck column; the full sweet curve of his lips.

Sometimes there are some people, male or female, so beautiful that one is in awe.  I have no thought of knowing them or having sex with them.  Just an occasional glance will do me.  I know physical beauty is transitory, but then everything passes, not so?  Panta rhei, said the Greeks.  But they said it to remind us, because we keep on forgetting.

I Must Face the Men I Slew

When I lived in England, the tube (the London Underground railway) would have a poem in each carriage. The poems had to be short enough to fit into the space where normally an advertisement would fit. But other than that, there seemed to be no restriction: poems were mostly British, but there were plenty from America, Russia, Spain and elsewhere. A remarkably civilised venture. Somebody paid a team to select the poems, someone else was paid to print them, and others to post them up, all so that commuters might have a small touch of beauty in their lives. There's a reason utilitarian means the opposite of beautiful. Today most things ordinary people encounter are utilitarian. Ugly, sometimes so ugly it hurts: buildings, music, art, clothing, values.

A few years ago, I bought the paperback "Poems on the Underground". I see from Amazon that there are now several editions: I must have them. (Briefly considers selling body on street corners, but realises futility just in time)

I love the variety and spread of these poems. Unlike most anthologies, they're all good. (Did you know that the word anthology comes from two ancient Greek words, ἄνθος = anthos, meaning 'flower', and λόγος = logos, meaning originally 'word', 'speech', 'reason' or 'discourse'. So ἀνθολογία = anthologia/'anthology' really once meant 'flower gathering'. Nice, huh?)

Anyway, today I was thinking about war and its stupidity and evil, about Afghanistan and Iraq and all the innocents who have died on all sides, and I thought this poem by Rudyard Kipling was apposite. Most people think of him as a Colonel Blimp, a racist and an imperialist. Yet his first language was Hindi; he knew India and loved it and its peoples. He would have been aghast at the fratricide of Partition. This poem suggests he was far more complicated than a mere jingoist Little Englander.

A DEAD STATESMAN

I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

What do they dream of the Bushes and Blairs and Husseins, as they lie asleep at night or in their graves with the blood of tens of thousands on their hands? How do they sleep?

By the way, here's a lovely post on Kipling.

Know thyself

The Greeks were extraordinary. 1000 years BC, Homer (or somebody, they're still disagreeing about whether it was one or more men, and just how much he took over from original culture and how much he made up from whole cloth himself) wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad. These are among the most sublime poems ever written. They were written in an archaic Greek dialect, which was different (though not very) to the language spoken by the average Athenian of 500 BC. If you never do anything else, try and learn some Homeric Greek, a "gateway to paradise" (Which reminds me of what a French courtier is reputed to have said when informed by a beauty at the court of Louis XIV that she wasn't wearing undies, "Madame, I cannot tell you how pleased I am that the doorway to paradise is always open") A city of just 30,000 male citizens with a total population of perhaps 200,000 includings slaves, metics (foreigners) and women produced a cultural efflorescence which still echoes today across the entire globe.

They had many pithy sayings and phrases (itself a Greek word!)

This particular one comes from the classical period, 500-400 BC. Gnothi seauton (or sauton). 'Know thyself'. 'Gno' is from the same Indo-European root as 'know' (we once pronounced the 'k'). Compare the Scottish/German/Dutch 'ken'. The Latin word in 'Gnosco', where the 'sc' represents what the grammarians call an 'inceptive', i.e., a 'get to' So the Latin originally meant 'get to know'. With co(m) in front it's come into English as 'cognoscenti' (Italian = people who know), 'cognisances' etc. and with 're' in front of that, 'reconnaissance' ('finding out') , 'recognize' and so on.

The 'se' or 's' represents 'you, singular'. 'auton' means self ('automobile' = a self-mover). So 'sauton/seauton' means thyself. By the way, the 'thou/thy' of Middle English (and still used today in Yorkshire) is classic Indo-European. The Greek 'su' for 'thou' (Latin 'tu', German 'du', Russian 'tyi', Sanskrit 'tva') moved via an intermediate stage 'tsu' to 'su'.

There you have it. You'll soon be fluent.

The image (which dates from classical Greece) shows two men about to kiss at a dinner. Filthy perves.

Judge not lest ye be judged

In Greek: me krinete hina me krithete.

Literally, 'do not judge' (again and again, i.e., simple imperative) 'lest you be judged' (passive aorist subjunctive, i.e., judged once, implying, in other words, when you appear before God. In other words, not quite so cuddly as I thought.

'Me' is μη, i.e. 'mu eta', pronounced like 'meh' in English, but with a longer vowel. It means 'not' in commands and injunctions. And 'hina' (ινά -- I can't find a character to show the' rough breathing' or h in Greek which should be at the beginning of the word) survives in Modern Greek as 'na', and it means 'so that'. Thelo na erkhomai = I want to go, in Modern Greek,which would be not that different in classical Greek, though the pronunciation has shifted.

My head is filled with useless shit.