Sunday 24 January 2010

Virgil

Being myself / No stranger to grief, I am learning to help the unhappy.

- Dido, The Aeneid, I:631-2


Trust not the horse, / You people of Teucria's land. Whatever it is, / I fear the Danaans, even when bearers of gifts.
- Lacoon, The Aeneid, II: 49-52

Just because it's good to know you've been misquoting it for years. At least, if you're me. And if 'thinking it in your head sometimes' counts as misquoting. And if you often said 'Romulans' instead of 'Greeks' anyway, in deference to Star Trek II.

Friday 15 January 2010

Rome

Titus Pullo: Here's your money. But she'd better fuck him like Helen of Troy with her arse on fire.

Lucius Verenus: All will be well: a suitable offering was made to Triton.
Titus Pullo: Cack. If Triton can't keep us drier than this, he can suck my cock.

Thursday 14 January 2010

Sophocles

only the gods never become old, never die.
Time - dictator time - wrecks all else.
The might of the earth wastes away.
The strength of the body too.
Loyalty faith trust, all die, and treachery flourishes.
No spirit remains constant between men, between cities.
Soon
or perhaps later
the sweet becomes bitter and then loved again.
And so if between you and Thebes the days now pass in pleasantness, infinite time brings on infinite days and nights, in which, to the echo of a small word, a spear will smash the concord of past days.
And then my sleeping corpse, hidden, cold, will drink their hot blood
Oedipus, in Oedipus at Kolonos, First Episode

Wonder
at many things
But wonder most
at this thing:
Man
who
crosses the speckled sea
across winter storms ...

He has found a way
to weave the different nets
that ensnare giddy birds
trap the wild species of the plains
and catch the dwellers of the sea.
Ingenious man ...

He taught himself speech
thought light as wind
the passions that raise cities
and
how to escape the bitter shafts
of rain
the frost
the wrath of the open sky.
Nothing stops him:
he finds his way through
everything.
From death alone he sees no
way out,
even though
he discovers routes through stubborn diseases.
Second Chorus, Antigone