I thought I might contribute something like Eric’s series on Lucan, and while I continue my search for the right text, I’ve decided to work through a brief poem by Michael Choniates, the underrated Archbishop of Athens at the time of the 4th Crusade. I say underrated because through my own reading of his letters I’ve become convinced of his importance as a scholar and as a promoter of genuine scholarship. You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Wilamowitz lists him along with his teacher Eustathius as princes over and against the certainly overrated Tzetzes.
This poem laments the state to which Athens had fallen by the time of his bishopric.
I’ll begin with just the first three lines, followed by my translation:
- Ἔρως Ἀθηνῶν τῶν πάλαι θρυλουμένων
- ἔγραψε ταῦτα ταῖς σκιαῖς προσαθύρων
- καὶ τοῦ πόθου τὸ θάλπον ὑπαναψύχων.
‘A love of that chattering Athens of old
wrote these verses, playing in the shadows
and little by little soothing the sting of its longing.’
Notes: The participle θρυλουμένων may be taken to mean ‘talked about’ or ‘chattering amongst itself’, and I lean toward the second of these. Is there a word that well conveys the idea of a place being filled with voices? Michael will go on to lament the loss of orators and modes of public life, and we know that he was mortified to find that the natives no longer understood the ancient dialect. The shadows, I think, are a nice touch. They prefigure the image he will create, the images he evokes, and the ruins of the past both in literature and in the dilapidated remains that surround him in the city.
I should probably also justify my use of the phrase ‘little by little’: the compound prefix ὑπανα- generally means something like ‘gradually.’ And taken literally, he describes his love, in writing this verse, as gradually ‘cooling the heat’ of his longing, but ‘soothing the sting’ is better and not unsupported.