Hermes
Sit where you are. I will soon put that right; you shall see with the best; Homer has a charm for this too. Now, the moment I say the lines, there must be no more dull eyes; all must be clear as daylight. Don’t forget!
Sit where you are. I will soon put that right; you shall see with the best; Homer has a charm for this too. Now, the moment I say the lines, there must be no more dull eyes; all must be clear as daylight. Don’t forget!
Charon
Say on.
Say on.
Hermes
See, from before thine eyes I lift the veil;
So shalt thou clearly know both God and man.
Well? Are the eyes any better?
See, from before thine eyes I lift the veil;
So shalt thou clearly know both God and man.
Charon
A marvellous improvement! Lynceus-is blind to me. Now, the next thing I want is information. I have some questions to ask. Will you have them couched in the Homeric style, to convince you that I am not wholly unversed in his poems?
A marvellous improvement! Lynceus-is blind to me. Now, the next thing I want is information. I have some questions to ask. Will you have them couched in the Homeric style, to convince you that I am not wholly unversed in his poems?
Hermes
And how should you know anything of Homer? A seaman, chained to the oar!
And how should you know anything of Homer? A seaman, chained to the oar!
Charon
Come, come; no abuse of my profession. The fact is, when he died, and I ferried him over, I heard a good many of his ballads, and a few of them still run in my head, There was a pretty stiff gale on at the time, too. You see, he began singing a song about Posidon, which boded no good to us mariners, —how Posidon gathered the clouds, and stirred the depths with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of itself),— when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches.
Come, come; no abuse of my profession. The fact is, when he died, and I ferried him over, I heard a good many of his ballads, and a few of them still run in my head, There was a pretty stiff gale on at the time, too. You see, he began singing a song about Posidon, which boded no good to us mariners, —how Posidon gathered the clouds, and stirred the depths with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of itself),— when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches.
Contemplantes. Lucian. Henry Watson Fowler (Translator), Francis George Fowler (Translator). Medford, MA, USA. 2023-08-01.
Sponsored by Tufts University.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.