The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children (4 page)
Read The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children Online
Authors: Brendan Connell
Epistle:
Heracles, buffoon, to Maeandrius, secretary
Health to you, honoured one, and twice that much health to your master!
While at the agora at Colophon, and while eating figs, I read your tablet, your advertisement in search of a comedian, and so emboldened, it is to you now I do apply regarding employment under Polycrates, full ready to offer all the secrets of my person for his personal pleasure and ready to demonstrate, both bodily and verbally, my ability at any time convenient for yourself those skills which are in a small part listed below:
a
) Of humour I have countless succinct and jolly witticisms, most precious, and am often able to live for months on the power of a single joke. I am in possession of twenty more than twelve-hundred Attic jokes and never need have recourse to those from Rhodes. Impromptu, I can make jokes about bald men and then men of Cyme. In my possession are sundry amusing, very original doctor jokes.
b
) I speak and behave playfully and in a merry way.
c
) I can compare any man’s face to that of the particular animal that suits him, and thereby cause amusement.
d
) When it comes to telling riddles, I do not exaggerate when I say that there is none better than myself, and never has been since the time of Necho, that pygmy clown of the Pharaoh Dadkeri-Assi.
e
) I give an imitation of a cyclops trying to sing.
f
) I can ingurgitate a pigeon at a mouthful and forty duck eggs in rapid succession.
g
) I am a dwarf of ridiculous appearance and am skilled at humorous body language to match all occasions.
h
) I am a eunuch and therefore can be trusted around both wives and daughters; though, like a gelded charger I am far from lacking spirit.
i
) I know many tricks, such as how to make a man’s face turn green, how to make your guests’ urine phosphorescent, and how, with a tincture of coloquintida, to make it so everything they put in their mouths tastes harsh and disagreeably acrid like wormwood.
In sum: whether it be engaging in japes, down-to-earth leg-pullings or quips, dealing out pranks or weighty hilarity, you will not find one more skilled, search you from Caria to Euboea, scrounge through distant Thrace or far away Carmania.
I eagerly await your response.
Epistle:
Anacreon to Polycrates {
in the handwriting of the former’s anagnostes
}
To my Lord,
You have given me an exposition on Hipponax and asked if I have heard of him. The answer is in the affirmative, for he is the author of that piece which begins with the line ‘Very little wit have men who dine on drink’. But he himself does not possess keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas which awaken amusement and pleasure in the least and, to tell the truth, I am rather shocked that you should have become such a fan of his. Simply because he substitutes a spondee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius does not make him a genius. He uses vulgar language. Will you, whose sensibilities I have always considered to be more delicate than the rose, be angry if I say that he is just a fad? And then, my Lord, I understand the interest you might feel in these brothers, Athenis and Bupalos, hanging themselves, but of what use is it to then catalogue the various works of art of the latter? Do you not know that the surest way to bore your reader is to tell him everything? Have I not often told you that less is more? And the word acrasscent, which you use with such authority. Where did you find it, as I have never known any of the old authors to use it, or for that matter any modern? Or yet is it merely a quaint spelling of some common word, as when Sappho uses ‘
zapaton’
for ‘
diabaton’
?
In either case, b
etter if you stick to the old vintage. Furthermore, you should not say ‘make excuses’ but rather ‘apologetic’ just as one should not say ‘make speech’ but rather ‘perorate’ and instead of using ‘make parallels’ use ‘collimate’. But to conclude, talking about the niceties of language when the subject is Hipponax is in itself absurd, and not unlike serving lentils seasoned with myrrh oil.
XIII.
The palace of Polycrates, the roof covered with quasi-translucent Pentelic stone tiles from Naxos, was splendidly decorated, the floors of certain chambers interlaid with precious stones and agate, others with extravagant mosaics, the walls of all painted with a hundred interesting scenes. One room was frescoed like an ocean deep, with octopuses, urchins, lantern-fish and dolphins, tritons, nereides and sea-dragons. Another had diverse birds of the air admirably depicted flying across wall and ceiling, perched on branches and pecking or scratching at the earth. There was a chamber which displayed scenes from the
Cypria
of Stasinus, another with scenes from Aesop’s fables. In his room of oddities he had a stuffed hippopotamus, the skeleton of a winged snake, and jars, one containing an enormous and misshapen foetus, another the embalmed body of Hieronymus, a kind of memorabilia of Polycrates’ rise to power. In his courtyards he had statues of athletes, satyrs, a naked woman playing a flute, an acrobat, a bull, a drunken old woman stumbling, a portrait of Anacreon.
On leisure days he would sit in his garden, under the shade of the
amamaxudes
, or else wander along the paths, sniff at the flowers and sample prime pieces of fruit from his orchard. There were roses that were half white and half red and vines which carried both white and black grapes together, grapes that were not fit for wine, but for eating were deliciously sweet. He had a mulberry tree which was grafted to a chestnut tree, a chestnut tree grafted to a hazelnut tree and a pomegranate grafted to an oak. He grew cadmium-yellow lemons which smelled of cinnamon, melons odiferous as peach blossoms, and artichokes which breathed the aroma of hyacinth, were without sharp prickles and tasted not unlike sweet plums. There were peach and cherry trees that produced fruit without pit and almond trees whose nuts had shells so tender and thin that a mere touch would leave the flesh naked. And then, planted in an enormous clay pot, grew his fructiferous tree of delicacies, the trunk of which split off into three boughs, one engrafted with pomegranates, one with golden pears, and the third with tinzenite-red oranges. And interspersed amongst his real trees he had bronze trees elaborately painted in impossible colours and along certain walks there were beds of artificial flowers made of ivory and electrum.
He collected dogs from Epirus, Dalmatia and Lacedaemon; introduced to the island goats from Scyros and Naxos, sheep from Miletus and Attica, and swine from Sicily. He had an aviary with diverse kinds of birds, including ospreys, and even a theocronus, a bird generated from a male hawk and a female eagle. There was a crane with two heads, a chicken with four wings . . .
XIV.
He was also a patron of letters and was the first to have the Homeric epics collated; and he collected a library of all known writers, a vast hall full of rare and valuable papyri from Egypt, Macedonia, Persia and beyond. There was the
Theogonia
of Cnossos, a
Historical Geography of the Aegean Sea
by Archilochos the Parian,
The Smyrnian Epic
of Mimnermus, and Colaios’
Calculation of the Length of the World by the Assistance of Oblique Triangles.
He had the complete works of Agias, Arctinus and Creophylus; he had books on harmony, warfare, rain water, indivisible lines, appellative nouns, lawgivers, definitions of neutral things, Zacynthian suppers, economics, asymmetric numbers, erotics, etymologies, mechanical problems, dialectic terms, votive offerings, hunting, and a great variety of other instructive subjects. And he let the architects, engineers and poets of his court have free access to these works, thus greatly advancing the level of the sciences of the island, so they did match or exceed in every way those of other parts of the world.
XV.
From a Catalogue of Literary Treasures:
Philammon:
A Hymn to Demeter
, engraved on a heart made of mountain copper
Peisander of Camiros:
Epic of Heracles,
in forty books on amphitheatric papyrus
Arctinus of Miletus and Eumelus of Corinth:
Titanomachy
Imhotep:
On Quadrilateral Masonry
, written in hieratic script with notes in an unknown hand in Greek
Cinthaethon of Lacedaemon:
Oedipodea
Lesches of Mitylene:
Little Iliad
Eugammon of Cycene:
Telegony,
written in gold lettering on vellum of gazelle
Hesiod:
Aegimius,
with pictorial designs by Clitias and Ergotimos
Antimachus of Teas:
The After-Born,
decorated with bands of purple and black rays
Asios, son of Amphiptolemos:
Epic of Phoinix,
written in boustrophedon, Greek cattle-track
Hybrias:
Wine Songs,
a series of eighteen, each engraved on an individual wax tablet
Panyassis of Halicarnassus:
Heracleia,
in the handwriting of the author
Olen:
Hymns
Phocylides:
Epigrams Against Bestiality
, recto
Styptic Sayings
, verso
XVI.
Fragment of a Popular Song Invented by Ibycus
10
Sung to the Sound of that Instrument Called the Sambuca, also Invented by Ibycus:
You are always aloft, my mind,
Like some old porphyris, with outstretched wings.
Said Ibycus:
Spartan girls are naked-thighed and man-crazy.
Said Anacreon:
I am pining for you boy with maiden’s eyes and voice more musical than a monaulos,
but you ignore me, oblivious to the fact that you hold the reins of my heart.
Said Anacreon:
He’s so fresh; he exhales sagda and his skin smells like apples.
Said Anacreon:
Love, like a smith, hits with a huge hammer.
Said Anacreon:
In truth boy, you are more skittish than a horse.
XVII.
Bathyllus was a youth of remarkable beauty, thoroughly effeminate in his manners. His hair, saturated with odiferous oil of flowers, was parted evenly in the middle and streamed down over either cheek; he had a plump neck, a delicate mouth and a full jaw with a dimpled chin. His eyes were painted green with malachite, like a woman’s. He sang the song which begins with the words:
Pallid and pink as his *****
was his penumbra;
blushing is my heart when aflame,
plucking at his lyre with his plectrum between each saccharine verse. When this was over all applauded vigorously. Polycrates, his face flushed with wine, offered a toast to the young man.
Ibycus murmured, “Bathyllus, off-shoot of the opal-eyed Graces and pet of the flaxen-haired Muses, it is you that Cypris and Persuasion of the tender looks rear amid the roses.”
Anacreon, touching the young man’s hand, declared it to be “softer than a fine robe,” looking at his complexion, said that it was “fresher than water,” at his neck, “whiter than milk or even an egg,” <
boiling me. harder
. hotter than rock. fire. you filly look askance at me and think old me unskilled while well bridle you I would and turn you about the limits of the track . . . but now you feed in the meadow and lightly frisk, play, for you do not have a skilful rider experienced with young studs
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